


Partaking of the Divine

by JoyAndOtherStories



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Biting, By HolyCatsAndRabbits, He's a vampire but it's still Crowley, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Mr. Fell's Bookshop Ficlets series, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mr. Fell's bookshop, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Queer Guardian Demon Crowley (Good Omens), Vampire/Angel Romance, but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyAndOtherStories/pseuds/JoyAndOtherStories
Summary: A vampire/angel AU of the Ineffable Husbands, including the husbands as guardians of the queer community.Inspired by a line from HolyCatsAndRabbits'Mr. Fell's Bookshop Ficletsseries: "Vampire? Just for Angels?"In this fic, Sam (one of the bookshop regulars) writes a version of Aziraphale and Crowley's story, if Crowley were a vampire. Of course, Sam's knowledge of their story is very incomplete, but he gets the essentials!
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 197
Kudos: 394





	1. Smitten

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Regulars to the Rescue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22468645) by [HolyCatsAndRabbits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyCatsAndRabbits/pseuds/HolyCatsAndRabbits). 



> Note: DON'T read Regulars to the Rescue first! Start at the beginning of the bookshop series with [Are You an Angel Too?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20835785)
> 
> A Few Content Warnings:  
> \--Discussion of blood (because vampires)  
> \--References to cutting and bleeding, but in the context of vampires, not self-harm  
> \--Consensual biting  
> \--One character could be considered passively suicidal at one point (no deliberate self harm)  
> \--Same character could be considered to have chronic fatigue/chronic illness (but treatable)
> 
> Do read the Mr. Fell's Bookshop Ficlets Series by HolyCatsAndRabbits! (Linked below.) This story is a version of "Mr. Fell" and "Mr. Crowley's" story as told by Sam, one of the bookshop regulars, after the ficlet "Regulars to the Rescue."

**Partaking of the Divine**

A Short Story by [Sam Garcia-Wright](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21094781)

**Author's Acknowledgments** :

I’d like to thank my friends [Oliver, Caroline, Audrey, Lloyd, Eli, Rylee, Lela, and Rebekah for the brainstorming session](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22468645/chapters/53686708) that produced the idea of “a vampire, just for angels” that planted this story in my mind. Thank you for being your glorious selves. –Love, Sam

[And to the real “Tony” and “Azra:”](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1500449) Thank you so much for being there for those who need you. If you ever see this little work, I hope you’ll forgive the liberties I’ve taken with your story. We are so glad you found each other, in any universe.

Chapter 1: Smitten

It had taken Tony a long time to figure out what he was.

Not the vampire part. That was fairly obvious.

But it turned out that there were variants, even among vampires.

(Years later, he would describe it as the inverse of human food sensitivities. Some humans couldn’t tolerate gluten, or peanuts, or…actually, he’d lost track of what exactly they couldn’t tolerate, since he hadn’t needed to eat human food in centuries. Avocados, maybe. Those certainly seemed to make people angry. Anyway. Certain humans couldn’t have certain types of food. Certain vampires _had_ to have certain types of…food.)

He hadn’t understood why human blood didn’t seem to revive him the way it did the rest of the pack that had taken him in. It kept him going, sort of, but year after year he grew thinner, more exhausted, more and more drained.

And then one day—how long ago now? A couple of centuries. He’d scented something, and it had made him remember (for the first time in decades) what it had been like, back in his human days, to smell your favorite food when you were starving. He’d followed that scent without thinking, understanding for the first time the way his packmates felt on the hunt. By the time he’d tracked it down, his worn-out body was desperate, frantic.

He’d attacked before he even realized he was doing it.

The creature looked like a human but _wasn’t_ , he’d known with some kind of unshakable knowledge. He sank his fangs into its jugular before it knew he was there, barely heard its scream as he drew in the first true nourishment of his undead life.

If he _had_ been paying attention to the scream, he might have realized that it held far more outrage than fear. Far before he’d taken in his fill, the creature had…transformed. It first glowed impossibly bright—Tony had fallen to the ground, shielding his face desperately—and despite keeping his eyes screwed shut, he’d been aware of a pair of giant white wings unfurling where none had been before—

“ ** _Foul beast_** ,” came a voice that echoed above, around, within him. He clapped his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help. “ ** _I shall smite you into dust—_** _ahh—_ ” The unbearable light dimmed, flickered. “ ** _You have injured this mortal body_** ,” the voice thundered, though more distantly. “ ** _You shall pay for this when I return to this Earthly plane_**.”

And it was gone.

Tony had lain for several minutes in the dirt, until the spots in his eyes and the ringing in his ears cleared. By the end of that time, he’d understood two things: First, that he’d just encountered an angel—a real, actual, angel from Heaven. And second, that he felt better and more energized than he had at any time since he’d been turned.

Which led to a third realization: _He was a vampire who required angel’s blood_.

Bloody Hell.

Or bloody Heaven, apparently.

His pack had risen enthusiastically to the challenge once he’d explained this revelation to them. Hunting humans, after all, was easy; there were thousands of them, and it was simply a matter of finding ones who wouldn’t be missed. There were even humans who were…excited…by the sensation of being bitten, for vampires who had the patience and the skill to partake without killing or turning the human in question. Angels, on the other hand, were thin on the ground and were decidedly _not_ willing to offer themselves up for biting. They had to be stalked and trapped with painstaking precision, and even then proved to be both dangerous and near-indestructible. Even with the entire pack working together, Tony was usually lucky to get a trickle of blood from a cut or a scrape.

Fortunately, angel blood was potent. A teaspoon or two was enough to keep him going for years before he started to decline again.

The next realization: Angels were…problematic.

Tony hadn’t had much education on religious topics in his human years—he’d been a peasant farmworker—but he’d gotten the impression that angels were helpful. Kind beings who brought good news, that sort of thing.

Maybe _that sort of thing_ had gone out of style in Heaven, because whenever he and his pack found angels, they were invariably on some sort of mission of…punishment. Destruction. Occasionally, the target of said punishment or destruction might have deserved it, but even in those cases, the angels didn’t seem to care about damage done to any other humans who happened to be nearby.

They were rather like vampires in that way, something Tony was trying not to think too hard about.

In any case, now it was 1500-something (years weren’t all that relevant to vampires), and he was exploring London for the first time and enjoying it greatly. Evening was approaching (contrary to popular belief, vampires could go out in sunlight. Admittedly, prolonged exposure made them queasy, but it was still _possible_ ), and he was just thinking about finding his way back to his pack for the night, when he scented an angel.

His most recent feeding had only been a few years before, but he’d be a fool to pass up a chance to pin down an angel’s location, so he wound through crowded streets and twisty alleys until he tracked the scent to its source.

His first thought: _Well, that one looks delicious_.

His second thought: _What the Hell is it doing_?

At first, the angel was bumbling along, reading a manuscript, and _chuckling_ at something it was reading. All of this was strange enough. Tony had never seen an angel bumbling; they usually strode confidently. He was fairly sure he’d never seen one reading either, and he’d certainly never seen one laughing—he’d never seen _any_ sign that they had a sense of humor.

But what really threw him was when the angel looked up sharply toward the road, where a small child darted around a slow-moving group of people, tripped on a paving-stone, and fell headlong in front of an advancing horse-cart. The angel was suddenly _there_ , scooping up the child and walking calmly with her to the side of the road as if that had been his planned route all along. Which it definitely had not been; Tony was clear on that—the angel had been several feet away and moving at a different angle. Now the angel was setting the child down, fussing over her a bit—pretending to pull a coin from behind her ear? Very badly, Tony noted irrelevantly, but it made the child laugh, and now the angel was reuniting the girl with her mother, who was fussing over her and fussing at her in equal measure, while the angel bumbled on his way, smoothing out his manuscript, and Tony was so gobsmacked that he forgot to move until the angel had disappeared around a corner.

Cursing, he hurried to catch up, couldn’t get through the traffic, darted down an alley, scaled a wall—

Praise Lamia, there was the white-blond cloud of hair, bobbing along. Tony realized he could make better time if he stayed on top of the wall—it was narrow, but he’d been reasonably nimble as a human, and years as a vampire had only improved that.

He’d forgotten to account for human building flaws.

The wall betrayed him; several stones collapsed under his foot, and he tumbled down into the street, where the angel who was supposed to be his quarry nearly tripped over him.

Tony just had time to register the angel’s hair glowing in the sunset like a literal halo before he—it—drew back, startled, and Tony realized unpleasantly that, well, here he was, lying on the ground in front of an angel again.

Bloody Hell, he was about to be smitten, wasn’t he? Smited? Smote?

“Oh dear,” came the angel’s voice. “Are you hurt, my boy?”

Tony squinted up at him—well, not that far up; the angel had squatted next to him and was patting at his shoulders, checking for injuries.

“Ngk,” said Tony, sitting up and scooting away. This was more non-angelic behavior. Maybe it was a trick. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? That was rather a hard fall. Can you stand?”

And the angel was upright again, extending a hand to Tony, who looked at it stupidly, then suspiciously, before finally realizing he was meant to take it. His own hand moved automatically, taking the offered hand before he could stop it. The angel’s hand was soft and warm, and it occurred to Tony to wonder just how long it had been since he’d touched anyone warm—until that was driven out of his mind by shock at the disconcerting ease with which the soft-looking angel hoisted him to his feet.

“Now then,” the angel said, looking him over. Popular belief was quite correct in speculating that vampires were vain. Tony was wearing the latest fashion of doublet and jerkin, well-tailored to show off his imposing height and narrow waist, all in shades of black and dark grey, with red detailing for emphasis. His red hair was long and pulled back loosely, and he knew just how disconcerting it was to encounter only his dark lenses when attempting to look him in the eye. The entire look was a stark contrast to the angel’s, which was all creams and golds and light blues, displaying his rounded softness nicely, but at least a century out of date.

The angel gave him a twinkling smile. “I’m afraid you’ve gotten a bit dusty,” he said kindly, putting Tony’s preening to a shuddering halt. “Come, let’s have a drink and sit down for a bit, so that I can be quite sure you’re all right.”

“A drink?” Tony echoed stupidly.

“Or a meal,” the angel suggested. “In fact, I was just on my way to a lovely tavern around the corner”—he was guiding Tony toward that corner now, a gentle hand at his elbow that was inexplicably compelling—“They have _exceptional_ meat pies. When you’re in the mood for something hearty and filling, it’s just the thing. I can tell you—ah—oh, how rude of me. I haven’t even learned your name.” He looked at Tony with an inquisitive tilt to his eyebrows.

“Tony,” said Tony, because apparently he couldn’t resist those eyebrows—what the Hell was he thinking, telling an _angel_ his _name_?

“Splendid,” said the angel. “I’m Azra, by the way. Ah, here we are.”

And within minutes, Tony found himself sitting down to eat—to eat _with_ an angel, which was not how that sentence should have gone.

An angel who knew his name, and an angel whose name he now knew.

One of his packmates, centuries ago, when Tony had been newly turned, had counseled him never to learn the names of the pack’s…targets. “They have short, stupid little lives,” she’d said, contemptuously. “But if you learn their names, you’ll start thinking they matter. You’ll start thinking they’re people, not prey. To us, all of ‘em are prey, and that’s it.”

It had made Tony uncomfortable at the time, and he still quietly disagreed with it now, not that he could do anything about it when the pack was on the hunt.

But he was starting to understand the point a bit better now, as he sipped wine and watched the angel—Azra—eat.

Because Azra was a person now. An angelic person, but still a person.

And Tony wasn’t thinking about this angel’s blood, and how it might taste as he pulled it from him. Well, he was a bit. But he was thinking far more of the way Azra’s feelings danced across his face as he talked, the tiny moans of satisfaction he made as he ate, the way his hands fluttered through the air as he debated the merits of morality plays.

The remembered warmth of his hand in Tony’s.

Some time in the weeks to come, it would occur to Tony that perhaps he had been smitten after all.


	2. Sensible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tony!” Azra’s face did that glowing thing again—possibly literally glowing—and—oh Hell. Tony was lost.  
> He knew he was lost because he knew he’d do anything in his power to keep seeing that smile.
> 
> Tony’s next realization was that associating with an angel came with…complications.
> 
> First: This angel kept getting into trouble.

Tony didn’t tell his packmates that he’d located an angel.

Later on, he realized that this should have been a warning sign, right away, that he was in trouble.

At the time, he told himself that it was simply because he didn’t need to feed yet. His pack would be impatient to hunt the moment he mentioned an angel. Ordinarily, he would agree with them, but this angel seemed to be established here in London. He—it—had mentioned going to plays on a regular basis, and certainly had a knowledge of the available food options that only came with being a longtime local. Tony could keep track of the angel until he actually needed nourishment. His pack wouldn’t understand that. The concept of _not_ partaking of an easily available food source was not a vampire-friendly concept. So that was why he didn’t mention the angel yet.

It wasn’t because he couldn’t stand the thought of those kind eyes filling with shock and horror as they saw his true nature. Nor was it because he couldn’t bear the picture of that gentle face distorting with fury, preparing to smite him. Nor was it because he couldn’t tolerate the idea of that fussy, cheerful voice turning to righteously outraged thunder.

And it definitely wasn’t because he couldn’t remotely endure the image of that soft, smooth flesh pinned down and torn by his packmates—

He took in a breath that he didn’t need and forced his attention back to the pack’s discussion of their ordinary evening human-hunting plans.

When he sought out Azra—the angel—a week later, he told himself it was because he needed to verify his guess that the angel was living in London and would be here for the foreseeable future. It took him half a day—it wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t expected an angel to be strolling the Cheapside market streets—and then another hour while he tailed the angel, debating whether he should pretend to meet him by chance or invent an excuse for having tracked him down.

In the end, he decided he’d buy the angel a bottle of wine (he wasn’t entirely clear on how this would help excuse his running into the angel, but he opted not to think about that too hard) and lost track of him while doing so. He was literally turning in circles, trying to pinpoint the angel’s direction (his scent was strongly present but somehow everywhere), when he heard someone calling his own name.

He already knew Azra’s voice.

The angel’s eyes lit up when he saw him, which felt like a knife going into Tony’s nonfunctional heart, only…pleasant. Nobody’s eyes looked like that, all surprised and delighted, because of seeing Tony.

“Tony! My dear boy! I was hoping to find you again, but of course I had no idea where to look. Are you well? No lasting trouble from your fall, I hope?”

“Nnnrrrgghh,” said Tony. “Uh. Got this for you.” He thrust the wine bottle forward with both hands.

“You…sorry, what?” Azra’s eyes went from Tony’s eyes (well, lenses) to the bottle and back, his expressive forehead creasing in confusion.

“I—this is—” Tony frowned. He was a suave, silver-tongued _vampire_ , for Hell’s sake. “You bought me a drink. I thought I’d return the favor.” He held the wine out again, this time with one hand, using the other to give a mildly mocking half-bow.

Azra’s confusion slowly transformed into a startled smile. “You didn’t have to—that’s—that’s very kind of you, my dear.”

“It’s not—I’m not. Kind. Don’t thank me.” He definitely did not deserve the glowing smile the angel was bestowing on him, given that the gift was only a means to stalking the angel for eventual…

“Ah…I apologize. I’m not accustomed to receiving gifts.” Azra’s brow was furrowed again. “Will you share it with me, then? We could go to my rooms, if you don’t mind.”

Since learning where Azra was staying was exactly what Tony wanted, he could hardly refuse. But he was almost disappointed—this wasn’t hunting, this was…he wasn’t sure what this was, but it was too easy. He might have thought it was a trap, except that he was certain Azra had never set a trap in his angelic life.

Tony had never given much thought to what an angel’s living quarters might look like, but if he had, he would certainly not have pictured anything like Azra’s.

He would have expected angels to live in…a palace, perhaps, somewhere with high ceilings and a great deal of light, open and bare and probably very dull.

 _Not_ a set of rented rooms at the back of an inn, crowded and cluttered with piles of books, aging furniture, and an imposing rack of wine.

He also would never have expected an angel to be a good conversationalist, or get cheerfully drunk from several shared bottles of wine, _or_ continue to be a good conversationalist _while_ cheerfully drunk from said wine.

Tony himself was drunk enough, as he staggered his way back home, to admit that the angel was a better conversationalist than most vampires. They—he and Azra—could argue, and it didn’t turn into a fight. They laughed with each other— _with_ each other, not at each other, nor with each other at someone else’s expense. He hadn’t had a conversation like that since he’d been turned, and frankly, he wasn’t sure he’d had one when he’d been human.

How could he enjoy time with an angel—his natural enemy, his _prey_ —more than he’d enjoyed time with anyone else in his life? The living or the undead version of that life?

 _Alright, fine_ , he told himself the next morning when his head was clearer (vampires didn’t get hangovers, at least not from alcohol). _You’ve found the one nice angel. You don’t have to hunt him. Another one will turn up eventually. Just…forget about him. Pretend you never met him._

Right. Perfectly sensible compromise. Don’t hunt him; don’t seek him out either.

He lasted about three weeks.

Strictly speaking, he lasted one week.

It was at that point that…for some reason…he made his way back to the angel’s neighborhood and meandered through the area, mentally noting eateries and merchants and bookstalls. For some reason.

Two weeks after that, Tony escaped from the house his pack was occupying (when a game of tables turned into an incident of _throwing_ tables), bought a bottle of wine and a bound collection of very bawdy poetry, and knocked on the angel’s door.

“Tony!” Azra’s face did that glowing thing again—possibly literally glowing—and—oh Hell. Tony was lost.

He knew he was lost because he knew he’d do anything in his power to keep seeing that smile.

He was rewarded with the smile again when he handed over the wine, and then the poetry. He’d expected Azra to be offended by the unseemly nature of the verses, had planned on needling him about his prudishness.

Azra put on a pair of spectacles and began critiquing the writing style.

He even laughed at some of the better-written jokes.

Tony left with his head spinning, and not because of the wine.

Tony’s next realization was that associating with an angel came with…complications.

First: This angel kept getting into trouble.

It was Tony’s own fault that he discovered this. Azra mentioned casually that he would be away for a while, traveling “because of my work, dear boy,” and Tony felt suddenly ill, thinking of Azra heading off on some sort of punishing, destruct-ing mission like the other angels he’d seen.

So he followed him, because if Azra secretly turned into the sort of angel Tony was accustomed to—the smiting, condemning, avenging sort—Tony needed to know, _now_. But all Azra did at his destination was ingratiate himself with the locals—especially the ones who sold food and drink—and quietly work subtle miracles that actually _improved_ things. The humans had no idea what he was doing, or why their harvest was so good that year, or why the quality of the beer increased so remarkably, but Tony could feel it when Azra used his angelic powers—just a little, like stepping through the cool air around a spring.

There was no real reason, then, to follow Azra the next time he went away, but Tony found himself doing so anyway.

And the blithering angel managed to get himself kidnapped by spies.

Tony didn’t follow human politics, so he was never clear on whether the spies were working for Queen Elizabeth or against her, but regardless, they had Azra locked in an abandoned hut in the night, and they were going to _hurt him_ if he didn’t give them information, and Tony had forgotten what it was like to be angry until that moment. He managed to stop himself from crashing in through the window, instead taking the more sensible option of pounding on the door and using his considerable vampiric powers of persuasion to convince the humans to leave the hut and wander off into the woods.

Naked.

Tony was _very_ angry, after all. Plus, Azra might need a change of clothes.

He forgot about the humans completely when he stepped into the tiny room holding Azra and saw the delighted shock that lit up the angel’s face at the sight of him.

The next rescue was Azra and seventeen children (Tony counted) from a rooftop where they were trapped by a flood. One of them clung to Tony’s hand for hours afterward; he couldn’t get rid of her _or_ Azra’s aggravatingly fond smile.

He didn’t even have to leave London for the one after that; Azra worked as a young woman’s tutor for several years and was decidedly startled when her husband tracked him down, improbably but furiously convinced that the angel was his wife’s lover.

“Oh, I think perhaps you’ve got the wrong house,” Azra said. The man didn’t listen, and also had a knife. Tony lost his patience and hit him over the head. (Azra was correct about the fellow having the wrong house; the wife’s actual lover was Azra’s next-door neighbor. After Tony and Azra carted the groggy man to a nearby tavern, they quietly smuggled the wife and the lover out of London. They set the two ladies up in a country cottage where they lived out their lives very contentedly.)

Tony wished he could ride gallantly to Azra’s rescue on horseback, but unfortunately horses hated vampires (or possibly just hated Tony, but he preferred to think it was vampires generally). He did successfully swing from a ship’s rigging that one time Azra was kidnapped by pirates (only getting tangled once), which he thought made up a bit for the lack of horseback rescues.

Tony would never have expected an acquaintance with an angel to be so exhausting, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind, not when each rescue earned him the reward of Azra’s radiant smile.

The next complication came up for the first time some years after he’d met Azra. The angel had been away for a while (managing not to get himself into any situations threatening bodily harm), and Tony was wandering boredly down a bread-maker’s street, when he was hit, overwhelmingly, with Azra’s scent—but accompanied, for nearly the first time, with his old, familiar drive to hunt, to feed—

He was frozen, wide-eyed, in the middle of the street when he heard the familiar voice calling his name, turned automatically and saw the angel’s delighted, friendly face—felt his fangs lengthening as every hunter’s instinct in him told him to leap, attack, take his blood—the blood surging just beneath that soft skin—that skin which would yield delightfully under his fangs just before they broke through—

“I have to go!” he shouted, before Azra could get any nearer. “I can’t—I have to—”

And he turned and ran, weaving through horses and carts and human foot traffic, the image of the angel’s confused, gently hurt expression seared into his mind.

 _This is fine, this will be fine_ , he told himself, pacing in his room in the mansion his pack had recently commandeered. He’d been distracted over the past few years, had forgotten to keep a lookout for angels (other than Azra). Once he put his mind back to it, he was reasonably successful at locating them and enlisting his pack to hunt them.

Trailing Azra on his missions turned out to be unexpectedly beneficial—sometimes Azra met up with other angels, inadvertently giving Tony targets as well as education about the types of meeting places that angels preferred. He tried to pretend he didn’t feel guilty, using Azra to attack Azra’s friends. (Colleagues? Fellow celestial beings? Whatever angels were to each other.) This was made easier by the fact that the angels-other-than-Azra hadn’t improved any in the past few decades. Tony increasingly came to the conclusion that Azra was the only angel who deserved the name. After a while, “angel” only meant “Azra” to Tony; the others were a sort of faceless “Them” who existed only as his adversaries. Part of him knew that this was not a wise way of viewing an entire category of individuals, but he was quite adept at ignoring that part of himself.

The third complication was also something he tried to ignore.

If he were to be honest with himself (something he typically tried to avoid), he would have had to admit he’d been uncomfortable with vampiric…feeding methods…for quite some time. Tony didn’t have the appetite (literally) for humans that his packmates did, which perhaps had kept him from growing callous to human feelings or sufferings. He’d tried to stay sensibly quiet about it, naturally. His pack was his family, and of course they had to eat. And vampires didn’t have any business having a conscience, or at least not that kind of conscience.

But spending time with an angel—rescuing the angel, rescuing humans with the angel—getting to _know_ humans along with the angel…well, things were complicated.

He’d tried to subtly influence his pack toward more…ethical options…over the years, with very limited success, but when a few new vampires joined them from a pack that had split, he realized that other vampires were even worse.

Which was how he’d gotten here, running flat-out down a back alley, crashing into a wall as he cornered poorly, recovering to lurch to the angel’s door, pounding desperately—

“Angel! Angel, let me in, please!”

Seconds crawled by, agonizingly, before Azra opened the door, warm light spilling into the dark street.

“Tony? What on Earth?”

“Sorry, sorry, angel”— Tony was shoving past Azra, ignoring his obvious surprise—“lock the door, please just lock the door. I’m sorry; I’ll explain—”

Tony collapsed on a bench, watching while Azra locked the door with infuriating slowness, felt a ripple in the air that he hoped meant the angel had secured the place with something more than a simple lock.

Azra, still moving strangely slowly, turned back toward Tony. His face looked…odd. “What did you call me, dear boy?”

Tony opened his mouth and froze. Oh _Hell_. “Azra,” he lied pointlessly. “I said Azra. Because that’s your name.”

“No,” Azra said, still ponderously slowly. “No, you said ‘angel.’”

“It’s a nickname,” Tony said immediately. “I call people that sometimes.”

Azra cocked his head very slightly to the side. “I don’t think you do.” How did that soft face look so stony?

“Don’t,” Tony said, holding up his hands like a shield, “please don’t—”

Now Azra’s face wrinkled in something close to his ordinary puzzled frown. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t—errhhh—smite me, or, or get all wrathful. Please.” Tony lowered his hands, but only slightly.

The frown deepened. “Why in Heaven’s name would I do that?”

“Uh…literally in Heaven’s name?” Tony pointed out.

Azra let out a sigh. His shoulders sagged. “How long have you known…what I am?” he asked quietly.

“Um.” This was a complication that Tony really didn’t need right now. “I…uuhhhrrrgh…always did.”

The angel blinked, drew his head back. “Since we met? And you never said?”

“Um,” said Tony again. “I’m sorry?”

Azra fidgeted with his collar. “In all fairness,” he said, his eyes darting around Tony like agitated butterflies, “I should likely mention at this point that I’ve also known for quite some time that you’re a vampire.”

“Ngk!”

Tony scrambled backwards, putting the table between himself and the angel, as if that would do any good. “How—what—no—”

“For Heaven’s sake, dear boy,” Azra started, then frowned again. “For something’s sake, in any case. It’s a bit obvious.”

“What? No it’s not!”

Azra rolled his eyes. “Do you have any idea how long we’ve known each other?”

“Uh,” said Tony. “A…a long time, I s’pose.” He eyed the room for other possible exits, just in case.

“More than two hundred years,” said Azra, dryly.

“What?” Tony’s eyes snapped back to the angel. He wasn’t good at keeping track of time, and he tended to sleep for long stretches of it, but _two hundred years_? “No. Can’t have been.”

Azra rubbed his forehead, sighed, and stepped toward the table; Tony flinched backward. Azra paused, looking hurt, but didn’t comment.

“Two hundred years, and you haven’t aged at all,” he said instead.

Tony frowned. “I really should have thought of that,” he muttered.

“It might not have helped,” Azra admitted, shifting awkwardly but not coming closer. “When we met, you fell from a wall the height of a man’s head, and didn’t even have bruises. You talked about morality plays that hadn’t been performed in nearly a century as if you’d seen them in person. I always knew you couldn’t be human. It was merely a matter of determining…well, exactly what you were. Oh dear, that sounds terribly rude. I apologize, my dear.”

“Nnhh—don’t mention it,” Tony said automatically. “Why didn’t you”—he rolled his shoulders—“y’know, smite me or whatever, once you’d figured it out?”

“My dear,” said Azra, spreading his hands distressedly, taking another step forward and then stopping himself, “why on Earth would you think I’d want to do such a thing?”

“Because that’s what angels do to vampires!” Tony said, flinging his arms out. “You see a vampire, you smite. It’s—we’re foul beasts from the pits of Hell, must be eradicated, all that. Oh, for God’s sake, sit down, stop _rocking_.”

“But—but that isn’t at all”—Azra sat gingerly at the opposite corner of the table from Tony—“angels are beings of _love_. We don’t go around…smiting—wait.” He looked back at the locked door with fresh alarm. “Tony, weren’t you…fleeing from something? Was it—was it angels?”

“Oh,” said Tony, rubbing his face. “No, not angels. It’s my pack.” He began gearing up to explain what a pack was—

“Why would you have to flee from your pack, dear?” Azra’s face was creased in concern, now; he reached a hand toward Tony and stopped himself. “What happened?”

“I—” Tony grimaced “—ruined a hunt.”

Azra cocked his head to the side again, going carefully neutral. “In what way?”

“I couldn’t—they had a—I couldn’t let them—” Tony drummed his fingers on the table and looked away. “It was a little boy.” The child’s frantic screams for his parents were still echoing in Tony’s ears.

“And?” Azra asked, raising an eyebrow and maintaining that clearly deliberate neutrality. Tony felt as if he were being tested.

“What do you mean, _and_?” he demanded, glaring at the angel. “I snatched him away from Hassher and told him to run, didn’t I? Why d’you think I had to—to come throw myself in here to hide? They would’ve had me, too, except I know this part of London better than they do. Stop smiling like that!”

Azra made absolutely no attempt to curb the fond smile erasing his studied blankness. “Oh, my dear, I’ve always known that you’re _nice_ —”

“Don’t call me nice,” Tony snarled, jumping from the bench and moving deeper into the room, away from that pleased face. “I’m stupid, is what I am.” He ran his hands through his hair, stared at a bookcase without seeing it. “Bloody Hell. Where am I going to go?”

“Well,” came Azra’s voice from the table, maddeningly calm, “for a start, obviously the only sensible solution is for you to stay here tonight. You’ll be quite safe. Nobody can get in here if I don’t want them to.”

Tony turned back slowly to face the angel. “R-really?” he faltered.

“I am an _angel_ , dear boy. A miracle of protection is…rudimentary, to be quite honest.”

“No,” said Tony, feeling choked, “not that. The, the staying here part. You’d…you’d let a vampire stay in your home?”

“Tony,” said Azra, his face a study in bafflement, “I invited you into my home the second time I ever met you. You’ve been coming into my home for two hundred years. And, as we’ve just established, I’ve known you were a vampire for nearly the entire time.”

“…Huh,” said Tony, insightfully. He flopped into a chair. “Alright, but…your lot. Other…other angels.” His mouth twisted at how wrong it felt to call anyone other than Azra an angel. “What would they think? They wouldn’t approve of you…sheltering a vampire, would they?”

Azra’s mouth had compressed into a flat line. “It’s not as though they come here often.” He tugged at his collar, twitched the ruffles at his wrists. “Besides, sheltering…anyone…from a pack of marauding vampires is…virtuous.”

“They’re not going to see it that—”

“Would you like some wine, dear boy?” Azra was up and heading toward his wine rack.

“I’m going to need something stronger than that tonight,” Tony sighed.


	3. Starved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Besides entertainment, eating, and book-hoarding, Azra soon adopted a new personal project: Helping Tony find ways to consume human blood ethically.
> 
> “Since you no longer have the…ah…assistance of your pack, dear, and I’m sure you’d never…” Azra waved a hand—“pretend to befriend someone just for the purposes of taking their blood, we shall have to find other methods for you to…procure sustenance.”
> 
> “Ngk,” said Tony, nodding in a way he hoped hid the fact that he was trying to patch his heart back together. (Not Azra, not him, never him.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings!  
> Although there is a very straightforward, physical reason for his difficulties, Tony’s condition in this chapter has some similarities with:  
> \--Eating disorders  
> \--Chronic illness  
> \--Chronic fatigue  
> \--Depression
> 
> Strictly speaking, it’s more like a vitamin deficiency than anything else, but those possible triggers are something to be aware of going in. It gets better in the next chapter!

Living with Azra ( _staying_ with Azra; he wasn’t _living_ with him) was something Tony hadn’t allowed himself to think about. Well, not much.

If he had, he might have expected it to be similar to living with his packmates, only politer—existing in the same space but not interfering with each other, sleeping most of the time, fending for yourself for food and drink (the non-hunted kind).

He would have been wildly inaccurate.

First of all, Azra didn’t sleep. This wasn’t _too_ difficult to adjust to—Azra showed Tony to a second-floor bedroom which definitely hadn’t been there before (not to mention the fact that Azra’s rooms hadn’t had a second floor back when Tony had first met him). Tony was able to sleep undisturbed (actually _very_ comfortably), but it was a bit disconcerting to find the angel awake, fully dressed, and puttering about with his books no matter what time of the day or night Tony happened to emerge.

Harder to adapt to was that Azra…interfered. No, that wasn’t the right word. He…fussed. That wasn’t quite it either, to be fair, but it was all Tony was going to admit to.

He brought Tony tea in the mornings. He asked after his comfort (“I do hope you slept well, dear boy?”). He brought him reading material (Tony was mildly shocked at some of the more salacious items Azra’s collections contained). He solicited Tony’s opinion on topics from wine quality to witchcraft to the Wars of the Roses.

Tony had to remind himself (increasingly forcibly as time went on) that he preferred solitude, that fussiness annoyed him, that he was only here temporarily until it was safe for him to find his own quarters. And that he’d be happy when he was able to move out.

Somehow he didn’t think too hard about _when_ , exactly, he might move out.

It wasn’t vampires who finally reminded him that staying with an angel wasn’t a long-term possibility for him.

It was angels.

He and Azra were settling in for an afternoon’s chat about a play they’d watched the previous day when they both alerted—Tony because he’d scented other angels, and Azra because—well, because he must have detected other angels with some kind of angel-detection senses.

Azra’s face was ashen as he looked to Tony. “ _Hide_.”

Tony didn’t question, just bolted up the stairs and into his bedroom. Holding the door nearly shut, he had a bit of a view as Azra greeted two angels (Gabriel and something that sounded like Sandals-on), who encroached on his space in a way just shy of forcing their way in, all with a surface-level friendliness that made Tony’s cold skin crawl.

Gabriel (even Tony had heard of _him_ ) was tall and broad-shouldered and handsome in an odiously overbearing way. Sandals (Tony had seen more than one bully-behind-the-boss before, and this was clearly Gabriel's) was a bit shorter, and round in a way that should have been similar to Azra but suggested none of Azra’s comforting softness.

Superficially polite greetings done, the two invaders were gazing around with not-really-concealed judgment at the piles of books inhabiting Azra’s rooms.

“Why do you collect these…human goods?” Gabriel handled one distastefully and clumsily. Tony could feel the wince that Azra strove to keep off his face.

“They’re _books_ ,” Azra said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Humans record knowledge in them. It’s a splendid tradition, certainly something Heaven should be encouraging.”

Gabriel rolled his aggressively attractive eyes. “That’s all very well for humans, but doesn’t it seem to…lower you, as an angel? Spending time with all this _human_ knowledge?”

Azra’s knuckles were white behind his back.

“I—it’s always important to…to monitor what they’re thinking about. Writing about. For…fitting in.”

“Ha ha!” said Gabriel heartily. “Well, you’re certainly good at fitting in!” He poked Azra’s belly, not gently. Tony saw Azra flinch and felt his own hands clenching into fists.

“I smell something…evil,” said Sandals abruptly.

Oh Hell oh Hell oh Hell—Tony looked around his room uselessly for an escape route it didn’t have—

“Oh, I’m afraid I just received a rather large package of political writings,” Azra lied immediately. Tony blinked, impressed. “Ah—were you stopping by simply for a visit? I could…pour some wine, or make some tea?”

“Ha ha, no”—Gabriel’s lip curled—“we’ll leave that kind of gross matter to you. We’re just here to give you your next assignment. You’re the only angel stationed down here nowadays—have to check in every now and then!”

Tony listened vaguely to the details of Azra’s next assignment, sagging in relief against the wall. Finally, _finally_ , they wrapped up.

“And I’ll see you again…soon?” Azra inquired delicately, walking with them to the door.

“We’ll see you…when we see you,” said Sandals, grinning mawkishly.

“Ha ha!” shouted Gabriel. “That’s very good! ‘We’ll see you… _when we see you_!’”

And they were gone, praise…praise _anyone_.

Tony wanted to pursue them—for the first time he wanted to hunt for the purpose of destruction, to rip and tear apart—

And he couldn’t. Without his pack, he’d be lucky to give one of them the equivalent of a shaving cut before they destroyed him.

“Do they always treat you that way?” he said through his teeth to Azra’s back.

“Oh!” Azra jumped, pressing a hand to his heart—

“It’s me; it’s just me!” Tony reassured him while berating himself. “Sorry, angel, it’s alright—it’s just me.”

“Oh, Tony,” Azra let out a relieved sigh. “I do apologize.”

Tony wanted to hold him in his arms. It was physically painful to see Azra as he was right now—hurt and shaken and shrunken. “They shouldn’t talk to you like that,” he said fiercely.

Azra forced a smile. “They mean well. They’re just…unfamiliar…with how things are down here. It takes quite some time to adapt to living here, after all, and they’re only able to come for brief visits.” He brought his hands together in an attempt at his usual brightness. “In any case, it looks as though I need to pack for my trip!”

“I’m coming with you,” Tony said, and overrode Azra’s fussing about his safety. “I’ll be safer with you than in the city by myself,” he said firmly.

What he didn’t say was that, with him gone, Azra’s rooms could begin losing their scent of “something evil.” Nor did he mention his faint hope that being away from the angel’s rooms would make it easier for him to move out, and into rooms of his own, once they returned.

It didn’t.

He hated his new lodgings—not that there was anything _wrong_ with them, other than their lack of a warm, soft angel whose eyes crinkled kindly when he smiled. Azra visited, of course, and worked some miracles that he said would keep out anyone with hostile intent (Tony’s pack seemed to have lost interest in finding him to rip him to shreds, but the precaution was still sensible). But when Azra wasn’t there, the rooms were dark and bare and cold, and Tony—who was a _vampire_ , for Lamia’s sake, and should have _liked_ things to be dark and bare and cold—scowled at the walls, cursed Other Angels, and slept as much as possible.

When he was awake, he couldn’t really stop himself from gravitating toward Azra, though he did his best to limit his time in the angel’s rooms (“I’m _evil_ , remember, angel? Can’t have the place smelling like me in case Captain Gibface pops in for a visit”). So they went out, meeting to take in plays and meals and concerts. Well, Azra took them in; Tony mainly took in the sight of Azra’s expressive face and fluttering hands.

Besides entertainment, eating, and book-hoarding, Azra soon adopted a new personal project: Helping Tony find ways to consume human blood ethically.

“Since you no longer have the…ah…assistance of your pack, dear, and I’m sure you’d never…” Azra waved a hand—“pretend to befriend someone just for the purposes of taking their blood, we shall have to find other methods for you to…procure sustenance.”

“Ngk,” said Tony, nodding in a way he hoped hid the fact that he was trying to patch his heart back together. ( _Not Azra, not him, never him_.)

In any event, that was how Tony ended up posing as a barber—just the bloodletting part of that job, not the hair-trimming and shaving. Azra posed as his “assistant,” taking _far_ too much pleasure in the role-play (thought Tony, trying to hide his fond smile). Their services quickly came into high demand, since Azra’s “assistance” actually consisted of performing angelic healing miracles under the guise of “tidying up bandages” while Tony “disposed of” (privately drank) the blood they’d taken.

This was fine while they were attending minor illnesses (and a reasonable share of imagined illnesses), but became problematic as they began seeing more severe cases. It took nearly a year for Tony to realize that Azra was hiding the toll that healing took on him. They’d healed a young boy—Tony knew very little about human ailments, but Azra had gone very serious as soon as they’d entered the house. By the time Tony came back in from “disposing of” the blood they’d extracted, the angel’s hands were glowing where they rested on the boy.

“Azra, stop!” Tony barked in alarm, stepping toward him—Azra held up one finger and Tony stopped, not because he chose to but because he hit some kind of invisible barrier—

“Nearly—” said Azra, barely audible—“ah. There we are.” The glow faded, and he stepped back from the boy—no, _fell_ back. Tony caught him just before his legs gave way entirely.

“Help,” gasped Tony toward the boy’s mother, who happened to be the closest adult human. Thankfully, she was of the sensible, sturdy variety of humans, and got her shoulder under Azra’s other arm so that they could hold him upright together. The boy was left to the care of his father and at least three aunts (who fortunately had not been in the room when Azra had gone all angelic) while Tony and the woman walked the barely-conscious angel to Tony’s lodgings and tucked him into Tony’s bed.

“ _Don’t_ tell anyone,” Tony whispered furiously to the woman once this was done. Her eyes went to him and then distractedly back to Azra.

“He’s—” she started.

“I mean it,” Tony hissed, stepping threateningly closer. “He just saved your boy. If you tell anyone, they’ll mob him—and he can’t”—Tony’s voice cracked—“he can’t stop himself from helping, and it’ll drain him—don’t do that to him, please.” He’d planned on frightening her, lowering his dark glasses to give her a glimpse of his inhuman gold eyes, maybe letting his fangs show—but his gaze kept going to Azra, pale and still on his bed, and it was all he could do to keep his voice from breaking entirely.

“Alright, then, love,” the woman said, patting his arm. “Nobody will hear about him from us. You take care of him.”

Tony let out a shaky snort. “He takes care of me.”

“You can’t keep doing this,” Tony told Azra a few days later, pacing tensely, when the angel had strengthened enough to sit up in bed (wanly) and sip broth and tea.

“I’m perfectly fine, my dear,” Azra sighed.

“You’re most definitely _not_ fine!” Tony gestured at Azra’s blanket-covered, propped-up-on-pillows form. “This is the opposite of fine!”

“Alright, yes, but I _will_ be. A bit of recovery time, and I’ll be tip-top again. Besides, we have to be sure to keep you…supplied with your consumption needs.”

“Just say blood,” Tony groaned. “And I can take care of myself if I have to. I won’t do anything that…offends your angelic morality. You can’t save everyone, angel.”

Once Azra was recovered enough that Tony allowed him to return to his own book-filled rooms, Tony was startled when the boy Azra had saved turned up for a visit. (“It happens with some of them,” Azra told Tony later. “They feel a sort of…connection.”) Tony couldn’t suppress a pang of jealousy at humans being connected to his angel ( _his_ angel? When had that happened?), but the boy was very little trouble. Azra found books for him, and he passed his visits reading them avidly. Tony was even more startled one day when the boy brought a friend—that wasn’t the surprising part; the surprise was Tony’s realization that the boy had reached full-grown human size. When had _that_ happened?

The friend, as it turned out, was a young woman who was very displeased with her likely career prospect of being a ladies’ maid. Tony wasn’t sure exactly what Azra did, but the young woman ended up running a tavern some years later and always had something special saved for Azra, free of charge, when he visited.

A decade or two passed in that way, making healing calls to humans’ homes (and fussing over Azra after difficult ones), and helping the occasional humans who found their way to Azra’s home. Tony, who was a vampire who therefore didn’t need company and certainly didn’t care if a few stray humans found their true calling or their true love or a new appreciation for metaphysical poetry, tried to ignore how damned pleasant it was.

He tried to ignore it because it was, of course, too good to last.

Tony had let a tiny piece of himself hope that regular consumption of human blood would keep him reasonably healthy, somehow, this time. The rest of him had known better.

He still tried to ignore his decline as the years went by, and when he couldn’t ignore it anymore, at least to hide it from Azra. He let the gaps between their visits grow subtly longer, and slept for longer and longer stretches. But he nonetheless found himself sitting morosely instead of keeping up his end of their conversations, and snapping at Azra over minutia he couldn’t even remember later. Azra rarely retaliated, just gazed at him with quiet worry, which only made Tony feel worse.

One of the worst was a quarter century or so after Tony had left his pack. It was 1780-something, or maybe 90-something. They’d been to a musical performance—Azra was largely but not completely recovered from a recent healing call, and Tony had suggested the outing as a test of the angel’s stamina.

“Thank you for a lovely evening, my dear,” said Azra as they reached his rooms, laying a hand on Tony’s arm—and Tony jerked away from the contact; he was suddenly, horribly aware of the blood coursing through Azra, just under that thin layer of soft skin that had brushed his. He stepped away, willing his fangs to retract, forcing his eyes to stop their all-gold dilation.

“I—I’m sorry,” Azra faltered, then brought his fingers to his lips in horror—“Dear boy! Does my touch hurt you?”

Tony swallowed. “Sort of.”

“Oh, my dear,” Azra whispered, his guilt-stricken look a knife to Tony’s unnecessary guts. “I’m so, so sorry. Oh, I do wish you’d said—all this time, I didn’t know—”

“It’s fine; I’m fine, angel,” Tony tried to calm him while ignoring the bloodlust thundering through him. “It’s not all the time, it’s—”

“I should have realized,” Azra continued to berate himself. “Something holy touching something unholy—of course that would be painful.”

“Wait, what?” Tony said, still barely keeping his instincts contained. “Unholy?”

Azra blinked at him. “It’s merely a technical term,” he said.

“For vampires. Unholy,” Tony said, and his voice was angry and bitter, and he knew he didn’t want to treat Azra this way, knew Azra hadn’t meant to hurt him, and if he knew that, why did he say—

“I’d better go, then. Don’t want to contaminate you with something _unholy_.”

“No! Tony, that’s not what I—”

Tony was already striding away.

The next time he saw Azra, the ridiculous angel was locked up in the Bastille. “Too many frivolous miracles,” indeed. Tony suspected that a number of those “frivolous miracles” were Azra’s healing work, saving the lives of ordinary humans, and _damn_ Heaven—as literally as possible—for calling that “frivolous.”

They had crepes after Tony talked them back out of the Bastille (an easy task for a vampire). Or, rather, Azra had crepes. Tony had French wine and watched Azra eat crepes, practicing numbing himself to the pull of angelic blood.

That was the last time he was able to go abroad with Azra. He was disturbingly fatigued when they returned to London. Azra brought them straight to Tony’s lodgings, plainly doing his best not to touch Tony, and refused to leave until Tony was ensconced in his bed. The angel came back that night with a vial of human blood, and then a few days later with several more. Tony decided not to ask where he’d gotten them.

“They’re miracled to stay fresh, so you can…consume them…as you need to,” Azra said, wringing his hands.

“Alright, angel. Thank you.” Tony said, wishing he had the energy to convey his gratitude, but between his fatigue and the effort it was taking to keep his hunter’s instincts reined in, his voice was flat and dull. “You’ve got to go now, though. I’m sorry.”

Azra’s mouth tightened, but he nodded and left Tony to stew in his guilt.

Tony slept off and on until nearly the turn of the century, when Azra moved from his lodgings to his new bookshop. Tony brought him chocolate to celebrate, and reassured him that he was refreshed, thanks to his nap.

It was a lie, and Tony had forgotten how utterly horrible it felt to lie to his angel. But it (and the chocolate) earned him Azra’s beaming smile, and he’d known for centuries that he’d do absolutely anything to see that smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE AN ANGSTY FIC I'M SORRY
> 
> It gets much happier next chapter, which will be up soon! It's already written, so if enough people feel sad about this one I can probably be convinced to post it sooner! (the plan atm is to post Friday.) Leave comments, share it with your friends! XD


	4. Saturated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The word "obviously" is used in St. James Park.
> 
> (And then things get better.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Like last chapter, although there is a very straightforward, physical reason for his difficulties, Tony’s condition in this chapter has some similarities with:  
> \--eating disorders  
> \--chronic illness  
> \--chronic fatigue.  
> He could also be considered passively suicidal at one point.  
> Again, strictly speaking, it’s more like a vitamin deficiency than anything else, but those possible triggers are something to be aware of going in. It gets better about midway through the chapter!
> 
> Also, blood is present and very briefly described (in a positive way), though NOT as a result of any kind of graphic injury.

The years passed, and Tony continued to not recover, and continued to do his best to hide this from Azra. He’d had some (very slight) hope that another angel would turn up so that he could feed from it, but this didn’t happen. Even if there _had_ been an angel available, he realized after another decade or so, he wouldn’t have had the strength to hunt it.

He existed in a state of very gradual decline, with the help of human blood, a great deal of sleeping, and keeping excursions with Azra to a minimum. He thought he was concealing the extent of his deterioration from Azra fairly well, until one evening in the bookshop—probably 1850ish or so; Tony’s mind was too fuzzy to keep close track—

“Tony, vampires _are_ immortal, yes? That’s not just a myth?”

“Sure, yeah,” Tony replied, staring dully into his wine. “Unless we get killed. Knew some who’d been around a couple thousand years.”

“And you don’t age? Or…become ill?” Azra’s painfully worried gaze traveled up and down Tony’s body.

“Never knew of anyone getting ill,” Tony said. He got to his feet, working to cover how difficult that was. “Stop fussing, angel. I’m fine.”

“Ah,” said Azra, and Tony had to force himself to ignore the hurt tone. The room’s silence was prickly as he found his coat, fumbled his glasses on.

“Tony—” There was a definite quaver in the angel’s voice. Tony stopped, staring at the door a few inches from his face. “Please tell me if there is any way I can help you.”

Tony held himself still with an effort he barely had the strength for.

“You can’t help me,” he said flatly to the solid wood before him. “You can’t fix everything, angel.” He jerked the door open and got through it as quickly as he could, because if he didn’t, he would throw himself at Azra’s feet. It slammed behind him with a dead finality.

He reached his lodgings and dropped into his bed. As he drifted off, he thought for the first time that he might not wake again.

He did wake again.

Although “awake” wasn’t a good word for his condition, he thought as he attempted to haul himself upright.

He could tell already that he’d slept for years, maybe a decade. That would make it…1860-something. He wondered why he’d woken at all—he certainly didn’t feel refreshed; he could barely sit or stand. He’d been having a damned nice dream, too—Azra had been in it—

Oh wait.

Azra had been _here_.

Not very recently, but enough that traces of his scent lingered, like the ashes of a spent fire.

If Tony fell back into sleep as he wanted to, eventually Azra would find his body. And Tony could barely feel anything, but the image of the angel’s distress and, and guilt—he _knew_ Azra would blame himself for not finding a way to help—was unacceptable.

Tony tried to cudgel his useless brain into functioning—there were no good solutions to this; he’d known all along that there wouldn’t be—but he had to find something, something that didn’t involve Azra losing him _that_ way.

What he thought of was barely better. But it was all he had.

He was sprawled on a bench in St. James Park by the time Azra arrived in response to his message. His usual slouching, along with his sunglasses, should hide the worst signs of his near-lifelessness, he hoped. At some point in the last ten minutes, he’d realized that he didn’t have the strength to get up again.

Azra’s face lit up as it always did on seeing him. He reminded himself that he was beyond emotions at this point, so he couldn’t feel guilt stabbing into his heart.

“Oh, Tony, it’s _lovely_ to see you,” Azra said, sitting neatly on the opposite end of the bench, and obviously trying to hide his anxious scanning of Tony’s body.

“Yeah,” Tony said, drearily.

“Tony?”

“I’m going,” Tony said, because if he didn’t he would lose his nerve. “Away. Probably won’t see you again.”

“Going…going where?” Azra’s happiness had vanished, and Tony couldn’t feel, but he knew he hated himself. “Couldn’t I come? You’ve come with me often enough. In the past.”

“Can’t do that anymore. And no, you can’t come.” The flatness of his own voice would have sent more guilt twisting into Tony’s heart, if he’d had the energy to feel anything anymore.

“Because it’s…dangerous?” Azra asked doubtfully. “Or because you don’t want me to come?”

Tony forced his lips to form the words that he knew would destroy everything he cared about.

“I don’t want you to come.” Even then, he had to add the last two words—he couldn’t force out the lie of “I don’t want _you_.”

Azra drew in a breath. “I…I see,” he whispered, and oh Hell, Tony _did_ still have feelings, and his angel’s quiet hurt was exactly the right knife to find them.

“I have to,” Tony said, harshly. “I can’t be here anymore.”

“Tony,” Azra said, clearly forcing calm into his voice, “you’re not well. Please let me help you. At least let me help you…go wherever it is that you’re going.”

“You can’t!” Tony snapped. “This isn’t something—you can’t help me with this. We’re done. Go home, angel.”

Azra was quiet for a moment. “I’ll leave if you truly don’t want me. But, my dear—for, for Heaven’s _sake_ , Tony, I am _literally_ an angel. I’m sure I can do something to help you!”

“Yes—you’re an angel!” Tony shot back, hearing his voice crack, feeling himself losing the last of his control. “The only thing you could do to help me is to—to donate blood!”

“To…what?”

“Nothing,” Tony said immediately, grasping at what little remained of his senses. “I’m not making any sense. Ignore me.”

“I shan’t,” Azra said. “What do you mean, donate blood? Surely angel blood would harm a vampire?”

“Prob’ly some vampires,” Tony said, finally too tired to hide anymore. “Not me.”

His angel was clever. If Tony’d had the strength or the courage to look at him, he knew he would have seen him putting the pieces of this puzzle together.

“You…you _need_ angel’s blood?”

Tony dropped his head into his hands.

“You knew I was an angel from the beginning,” Azra said slowly. “Were—were you _hunting_ me?”

“Yes.” Tony didn’t look at him.

Azra stood from the bench, took a step backward. “You found out where I lived. You visited—I thought…I thought you enjoyed my company.”

Tony stared at the railing through his dark glasses. “Had to keep track of you.”

“Oh, Lord,” Azra said—Tony could see him clasping and unclasping his hands—“all those times you’ve been there to, to help me—I thought it was because you _cared_. You—you were just—preserving a food source. Oh, I know I’m foolish and naïve, but—ah, I should have seen it. I should have known that nobody—”

“You should have known that a vampire couldn’t be kind, couldn’t have a friendship,” Tony growled, as fiercely as he could manage.

And Azra was already shocked and angry, but this shattered him.

“Obviously,” he whispered, his eyes huge and welling with tears. He took one more step backward, away from Tony, and then spun on his heel, fleeing with hurried, jerky steps, leaving Tony alone and crumbling on the bench.

Tony had no idea how long he sat there.

In the end, the only thing that made him move was the thought of humans finding his body on the bench and displaying it forever in some kind of exhibition.

It took him until nightfall to reach his lodgings. He could only keep himself going for a score or two of yards before he had to pause, lean on the nearest wall, fall onto the nearest bench. When he finally staggered into his own doorway, he nearly collapsed onto the floor, but grimly forced himself to his bedroom—if this was the end of him, he could at least go out with as much comfort as possible. His bed enveloped him, wrapped him up, told him he didn’t have to get up again.

He wondered hazily how long it would take him to…end. Whatever you called it when something undead became…actually dead.

He should write Azra a note. Just in case the angel…tried to find him. Kind of thing he’d do. Stubborn bastard angel. Sure. A note. He’d get to it in a moment.

He thought of Azra as he drifted off.

When he swam back up toward vague consciousness, he was still thinking of Azra. It was as though he could feel him everywhere, his angel somehow surrounding him and saturating him.

“Ah, there you are.”

Azra’s voice, though strangely hoarse.

Tony peeled an eye open to see, dimly, Azra seated on the bed, peering down at him.

Probably he was dreaming, or hallucinating. Either way it was nice—far better to die with Azra beside him than alone—

No. Wait.

He wasn’t dying—he felt—no—he knew that feeling but _no_ —

He scrambled to sit up, to put several feet between himself and the angel. “You—you—what did you do?”

It was a stupid question; he knew what Azra had done; he could feel the energy spreading through him, the energy he could only receive from angel’s blood. Hell, he could still _taste it_ , and he was horrified to realize that he _recognized it_ —underneath the copper tang were hints of cocoa and rich wine and sunlight and parchment and leather-bound books—and he’d tried so hard for so long _not_ to think of how his angel would taste, _how_ was it that he knew him without a doubt now that he did?

“Well, I wasn’t sure of the…ah…correct mechanism,” Azra said, fidgeting, “so I thought I’d start with the simplest option. I just pricked my finger a bit, and…let it drip into your mouth. I do apologize; I’m sure that’s dreadfully uncouth.”

‘Your…your blood,” said Tony, still dazed.

“I could hardly ask for another angel’s blood, dear boy,” Azra said, trying for his usual tetchy eye roll. “That would be terribly rude.”

“I—no—I—you shouldn’t have—” Breathing was optional for vampires, but Tony found himself in need of it currently. “I—I was never going to ask you.”

Azra’s lips shook. “I know, my dear. And I’m so very sorry for taking so long to realize that.”

“How—how long…?”

“Since we”—Azra swallowed—“spoke last? That was yesterday. Again, I apologize for the delay. I—for a moment just now, I…I thought I’d left it too late.” He wiped his face with trembling hands, and Tony realized, very belatedly, that the blue-gray-green eyes were red and puffy, the face drawn and tired—and—

“You’re still bleeding,” he said sharply.

Azra blinked at him, then looked down at his ring finger.

“I suppose I am,” he said vaguely. “Would—would you mind…?”

He held the hand out toward Tony. Tony stared at it.

“ _Nooo_ ,” he gasped as understanding hit him. He retreated farther away, nearly launching himself off the side of the bed.

“My dear,” Azra said, mildly reproachful, “it doesn’t make any sense to let it go to waste.”

“I swore I wouldn’t…take that from you,” Tony whispered.

“Dearest, you’re not taking it; I’m giving it.”

Tony looked, not at the outstretched hand with the red-shining drop quivering, beckoning, but at Azra’s eyes, crinkling kindly and brimming gently with tears.

He inched closer, not taking his eyes off Azra’s. Slowly, reverently, he took his angel’s hand, brought the injured finger to his lips. He kissed it with the tender devotion that Azra showed to the most delicate books in his care.

And then he had to turn away, unwilling for Azra to see him lick the tiny taste of blood from his lips, swallow it down.

Another ripple of strength spread through him. His angel’s taste was overwhelming. Tony tried to take in a breath and found that it was a sob instead.

“Darling”—he could just barely hear Azra’s voice over his own choking gasps. He flinched at a soft touch to his arm. “If it would help—may I hold you?”

Tony couldn’t speak or look at him; he simply let himself fall toward him, and Azra caught him in soft, caring arms, pulled him into his plush, warm lap, stroked his hair and his back with kind, calming hands. Tony curled into him, unable to stop himself, and shook with sobs, until finally the gentle touches and Azra’s soothing whispers began taking effect. He slowly relaxed, breathing in his angel—the warm, lush scent he’d just tasted, that he could still taste at the back of his throat, the taste he could have again if—

“No!” he cried out, and broke away, flung himself away from Azra, wrapped his arms around his knees, pulled himself into himself as far as he could. “No—it’s too much; I can’t—now that I know what it’s like, it’s too…I can’t touch you, can’t get near you, or I’ll—”

“ _Tony_ ,” Azra said, and he must have put some pacifying angelic power behind it, because Tony felt himself calming almost against his will. “Don’t you think you might feel that way simply because you’re starving?”

Tony squinted at him. “I’m not—I’m fine. I…I got what I need. You gave me. What I. It’s fine.”

“Oh?” Azra looked skeptical. “Do you feel…full? Surfeited? Content?”

“Oh no,” Tony said, shrinking farther away, “we’re not even going to talk about that. You don’t know what it’s like when we…when we drain someone. It’s—not you. Not ever. Not even _thinking_ about that.”

Azra raised his eyebrows. “And have you drained many angels, dear?”

“Err—no,” admitted Tony. “They usually get all smite-y before I can get more than a few drops.”

“And those few drops last you…”

“Ehhhh…a while. Few years, before I have to…to supplement. With human blood.”

“You see, that’s precisely what I mean. If a few drops can supply you for years, then I can’t imagine that you would need more than I could give, to feel full for once.”

Tony grimaced, trying to focus. The initial blaze of energy he always felt from angel’s blood ( _Azra’s_ blood) was wearing off, and the nasty exhaustion of the past months—years—was creeping back in around the edges. He’d never let himself get this low before, and he realized, a bit blurrily, that he didn’t know what he might need to recover fully. “Can’t—I can’t take—I don’t know—”

“My _dear_.” Azra’s voice was warmth washing over him. “Forgive me for saying so, but I doubt you’re thinking clearly yet. You—you were”—the angel’s voice cracked—“I think you were…nearly gone.” He took in a shaky breath. “I—I can’t imagine that a few paltry drops will come even close to restoring you. We’ve got a long way to go. Please, please rest and let me care for you. It’s all I’ve wanted to do, for decades, and finally I know how.”

Tony was sagging into the bed despite his best efforts. He trembled as Azra touched his shoulder, gently but firmly guiding him down to his pillow.

“There we are, darling,” Azra whispered, stroking his hair back from his temple. “Lie still now. Will you be all right for just a few moments?”

“Mmm,” said Tony, trying to keep his eyes open so he could keep looking at Azra.

“My dear?” Azra’s voice was tinged with anxiety.

Oh. He was literally asking if Tony might die in the next few minutes.

“’M’all right,” he mumbled. “I mean. Not all right. But’m not going anywhere.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Azra, pressing soft fingers to Tony’s cheek before getting to his feet. Tony had to suppress a protest at the loss of him.

Azra didn’t go far, just into Tony’s sitting room, where he snapped his fingers, and Tony felt the tiny frisson of energy that meant something had just been summoned into existence. He tried not to think about what it might be. He couldn’t see what Azra was doing, but he knew exactly when he did it—the angel’s blood-scent increased tenfold, a hundredfold—too much to measure. It permeated Tony’s room; it reached tendrils into his nostrils; it pulled at him; it dragged out every stalking, hunting, devouring instinct in his undead predator’s body—

Whimpering, biting his own lip, he buried his face in the pillow, clutching at the sheets to keep himself anchored down—Azra was right, Tony was _starving_ —he couldn’t take this, couldn’t resist, couldn’t—

“Dearest?”

“Mmnnphmmm!” he groaned desperately into the pillow.

“It’s fine, dear boy. I’ve got you.” And Azra _did_ have him; his hand on Tony’s arm was velveted iron, and it anchored Tony far better than his own scrabbling at sheets and pillows. He opened his eyes and turned his head slowly, first meeting Azra’s eyes—filled with nothing but kind concern, not even a hint of fear—before he looked to the vial the angel was holding out, full of what could have been mistaken for a rich red wine, but that Tony would have known without looking was Azra’s own angelic blood.

“Can you hold it?” Azra asked. “Or should I…?”

Tony forced enough control into his arm to take the vial without smashing it, brought it to his lips, and downed it in one gulp.

“Ahhh…” He collapsed back onto the pillows.

“It’s not too much, is it, my dear?” Azra’s voice was sharp with worry.

“’S fine,” Tony mumbled. Warmth was spreading through him, and whether it was due to the vitality from angel’s blood or the relief as his hunter’s instincts were soothed away, it was so powerful he could barely move. “Haven’t had that much before at one time. Gimme a moment.”

“Oh, darling.” Azra sounded choked. “Of course.”

Some moments later, Tony managed to open his eyes again. His angel was still sitting next to him on his bed, and it was probably that stunning fact in combination with the astonishing comfort coursing through him that prompted this bit of stupidity: “Am I _darling_ now?”

“Oh.” Azra swallowed and tugged at his sleeves. “Only—only if you want to be. I apologize—I was terribly worried, and it simply—ah—slipped out, and of course it’s dreadfully presumptuous—”

“ _Angel_ ,” Tony cut him off loudly. He took Azra’s hand and kissed it (and dear _God_ , Satan, Lamia, anyone—he could _do_ that now, could touch his angel and feel the blood coursing under that beautiful skin without the urge to tear and rip and take). “I want to be. There’s literally nothing on Earth or anywhere else I want more.”

“Oh, good.” Azra sagged with relief (well, “sagged” for him, which meant his shoulders dipped about an inch). “I’ve—oh dear, for so long now—” His voice gave out, and he hid his face with the hand Tony wasn’t holding.

“Angel—Azra—don’t”—Tony propped himself on an elbow, reaching up to wipe tears away—“it’s fine; don’t cry—”

“I will,” Azra said fiercely, catching Tony’s hand and pressing it to his wet cheek. “I—I thought I’d lost you, not only now but so many times before, and I didn’t even know if you felt—and I was too afraid to ask, and _much_ too afraid to tell you, and…” He smiled through the tears he wasn’t trying to stop. “And so I’m certainly going to cry about it.”

“I’m sorry I was such an ass to you,” Tony whispered. When had _he_ started crying? “Especially the past few…” Years? Decades? “While.”

“You weren’t an ass, you great prat; you were dying,” Azra retorted, and kissed Tony’s hand, his watery eyes crinkling fondly. “Speaking of which. How are you feeling?”

It would have taken several volumes of the worst love poetry in Azra’s collection to describe how Tony felt at that moment, but he forced himself to take stock of his body as accurately as possible. “Better than I have in…errmmmggh…however long it’s been since—since that one lady became queen. We went to a parade, didn’t we?”

“Queen Victoria?” Azra suggested, raising his eyebrows. “That was nearly thirty years ago.”

“Right,” said Tony. “Better than I have in thirty years, then. Don’t know what it would feel like to try to stand up, though.”

“Well, then, my boy,” Azra smiled, “no standing for you yet. Lie back and be comfortable. Let me take care of you for once.”


	5. Sustained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which excrutiating conversations lead to a great deal of enjoyment...and some legitimate concerns.
> 
> "'Ngk,' said Tony, and it was probably Azra who brought their lips together, because Tony was too busy melting into a puddle of lovelorn vampiric goo."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some content warnings:  
> -Referenced homophobia and transphobia; none occurring in-story  
> -Recovery from a state that resembled depression or chronic fatigue  
> -Consensual biting  
> -Nudity, referenced sexual activity (no descriptions)

It was a week before Azra consented to leave Tony’s lodgings at all, even for food (“I don’t _actually_ need it, dear boy”), which touched Tony more than he was willing to put into words just yet. In the end, it was Tony who insisted that they go out, together. Daily doses of Azra’s blood had brought him to a level of energy he wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced since becoming a vampire, and he was nearly climbing the walls. Possibly literally.

“Is this how people normally feel?” he demanded, pacing around his rooms. “You walk around and you just…don’t get tired?”

“I suppose so, my dear,” Azra said, watching him with his smile undisguised. “It’s different as an angel, of course.”

They went to lunch, and Tony had to hold Azra’s arm to keep from being bowled over at how bright and colorful and fascinating the world suddenly was. There were _people_ and _plants_ and _food_ and _buildings_ and—and Azra, most of all Azra.

“Are you alright, dear?” Azra asked him, finishing a final bite of a small cake.

“Um,” said Tony, shifting his dark glasses enough to wipe his watering eyes.

“Would you”—Azra’s face went suddenly shy—“would you want to come to the bookshop?”

That, of course, was a question that didn’t even need asking.

Nonetheless, as they walked toward the bookshop door, Tony found himself stumbling to a halt, as the memory of the last time he’d been there hit him like a blow to the gut.

“Angel,” he said weakly—he didn’t _want_ to think of the hopeless exhaustion of the previous century, the year upon year of creeping, grinding fatigue, the pain and confusion that he’d put Azra through. He wanted to keep living in the new reality they’d created now—but that reality was only a week old and abruptly felt like a dream in comparison to the centuries before it.

“Darling,” came Azra’s voice, an anchor he could pull himself toward. “Do come inside.” And a soft hand led him through the door, and soft arms wrapped around him and drew his head down to rest on a soft shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Tony whispered shakily into Azra’s collar. He’d made it nearly two whole days since he’d cried; apparently he was due. “Was—was awful to you when I was here last. You were just trying to help.”

“Shh, shh, dearest,” Azra replied, with soothing strokes to Tony’s back. “I’m the one who must apologize. I’m so terribly, terribly sorry that I wasn’t trustworthy enough for you to tell me the truth.”

This shocked Tony out of his wretchedness. He pulled back to frown at Azra. “What’re you talking about, angel? Of course you’re trustworthy.”

“But I _wasn’t_ , dear,” Azra objected. “Over and over again, I’ve wished you’d told me sooner, and every time, I remember how I reacted when you _did_ tell me, and—” his lips jerked, and he looked to the side, and it was Tony’s turn to comfort.

“It’s fine, ‘s fine, angel, you don’t need to apologize, I was being stupid, and it’s alright now anyway…”

Azra straightened his spine. “My dear,” he said severely, “ _you_ may have forgiven me for abandoning you on a bench when you were literally dying, but I certainly haven’t forgiven myself.”

Tony frowned more deeply at him. “But…there’s nothing to forgive. I lied and hurt you on purpose to—to drive you away. Being stupid, like I said. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

Azra sighed and managed a watery smile. “We can both be sorry, I suppose.”

Tony pulled him back into their embrace—stunned all over again that he could _do_ that now—and looked over his shoulder around the bookshop. It looked nearly the same as it had ten years before, comfortably cluttered with teetering piles of books, worn furniture, and dusty memorabilia. Except—

“Angel, what…”

“Ah,” Azra said, disentangling enough to follow his gaze. “I did rather rush out of here the other morning to find you. I didn’t take the time to tidy up.”

“But what…” Tony didn’t actually need to finish his question. The table and a good-sized patch of floor were covered in an assortment of empty wine bottles, manuscripts, books, little curio boxes—no obvious link between them, unless you were Tony, who’d given all of them to the angel over the past three centuries.

“You kept them,” was the first thing out of Tony’s mouth.

“Well, of course I kept them,” Azra said reproachfully. “You gave them to me.”

“Oh,” said Tony faintly, staring at the cheap, poorly bound booklet of vulgar poetry he’d given the angel the third time they’d ever met (had Azra worked a miracle to preserve it? It should have fallen to bits by now). “Why are they…out?” He waved a hand at the assembled hoard.

Azra’s gaze was also fixed on the stash of suspiciously well-preserved gifts. “After we…after the park, I, ah…I came to the conclusion that they didn’t…mean what I thought they did, at the time.” He’d gone shaky again. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for thinking it.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Tony said again, with a very different tone. “Were you…were you going to throw them out?”

Azra’s sigh told him that he’d guessed correctly. “Only for a few minutes, my dear boy,” the angel said, still looking away guiltily. “Once I started setting them out, I realized I couldn’t bear to…to dispose of them.”

“Angel,” Tony said urgently, “it was always—it was _never_ because I was…keeping track of you, or whatever I said—I was never trying to, to deceive you with gifts, or—”

“I know, I know, darling,” said Azra, squeezing his hand. “As I said, I’m terribly sorry for thinking it.”

“Not your fault,” said Tony, squeezing back. “What…what made you realize…?”

“Oh, it took me ages,” Azra said, waving a hand fretfully.

“ _Angel_ ,” Tony said firmly. “It took you less than a day. Considering you had to rethink three hundred years, frankly that seems mind-bogglingly fast.”

Azra looked at him doubtfully. “I suppose you could look at it that way.” He pressed his lips together and went on. “In any case, sometime in the night I—I knew I couldn’t bear the thought of you putting yourself in danger, regardless of how you felt about me. I was afraid you might try to seek out other vampires, or other _angels_ , and any of them might…harm you. So I decided I’d prepare some vials, with my blood, like I’d done with human blood before, and try to find you. I thought, even if you didn’t want…companionship…from me, at least you’d be safe.” (Tony found that his eyes were welling up, yet again.) “And…then I wept again, for quite some time. Because it struck me all over again—that I’d lost your friendship. Or, rather, that I’d never had your friendship.” (Tony pulled him close again, unable to keep himself from doing _something_ to comfort his angel, even in retrospect.) “Oh—thank you, dear. Ah—as I said, it took me ages. It was morning by the time I…looked around again. The light was coming in the window, the way it does, and it reminded me of Heaven, and I—I wondered if I should ask to be reassigned, up there, instead of—it’s _alright_ , dear, I don’t want that, now. I didn’t even want it _then_ , as soon as I thought of it.” He pressed his cheek against Tony’s wet one.

“As much as everything here seemed—oh, dreadfully dull and hopeless, at that point,” Azra continued, patting Tony’s shoulder to stop his protest, “I knew it would be worse up there. None of the angels see me as a friend—just an annoyance, I think, whom they must tolerate because I’m a means to an end.” He sighed, taking Tony’s hand in both of his, gazing at their clasped fingers rather than meeting Tony’s eyes. “That was…the lowest point, I think. I stood there, thinking of how the angels never really cared for me, and thinking in that moment that you were the same, that of course nobody would truly want me as a friend, and I’d been foolish to ever think that you—stop _growling_ , dear; I know now that you’re not like that. Because I remembered—it was like the sun breaking through clouds—I remembered when _they_ were here last—well, not _here_ , of course, but in my old lodgings—and you were so _angry_ —”

“They were horrible”—Tony couldn’t keep that contained anymore, at the memory of Gabriel and what’s-his-name’s derision toward his angel—“they should never treat you like—“

“Yes, dearest, that’s what you said at the time, and that’s what I remembered, and that’s when I realized—I couldn’t think of any reason that you’d be so angry with them, unless you cared about me. I mean to say, their behavior toward me shouldn’t have mattered to you, not if you didn’t care for me, for my own sake, and not for blood or anything else. And you were _furious_ with them; it was a bit terrifying, really”—Azra’s expression was fond, not terrified in the least—“that was the only time I’ve ever seen you look like you wanted to hunt something.”

“I did,” Tony said, still growling despite Azra’s admonition, “I wanted to _hurt_ them, and I _will_ , if—”

“I know, darling, but you simply can’t go around murdering archangels. In any event, after I remembered that, it was—it was like blocks tumbling down once you knock over the first one. Your story in the park didn’t really add up; I had simply been too distressed to see it. If you needed an angel’s blood, why would you go away from the only angel on Earth? Why had you never once tried to take blood from me, even when you easily could have, so many times? I doubt I’d have even noticed if you had, a few of those times after difficult healings. And—and then finally it hit me that when you said you were _going away_ , somewhere I couldn’t come”—Azra visibly swallowed—“that it meant something entirely different from what you wanted me to think. And, well, by then I was already running out the door.” He took in a breath that still wasn’t entirely steady. “And here we are.”

“And here we are,” Tony echoed hoarsely, and pressed a kiss to Azra’s temple—

—and froze. Kissing Azra’s hand was one thing, but would the angel even want…?

He felt Azra pulling back from him, and his otherwise nonfunctioning heart began to sink.

“Darling”—Azra’s voice was breathless—“may I—that is, would you want—” His eyes flicked to Tony’s lips and _oh_.

“Ngk,” said Tony, and it was probably Azra who brought their lips together, because Tony was too busy melting into a puddle of lovelorn vampiric goo.

They did eventually part, though only far enough that they could spend the afternoon returning Tony’s gifts to their proper homes throughout the shop. Well, _some_ of the gifts—they got lost in reminiscing over enough of them (“Didn’t you steal this from Cromwell, dear?” “Course not. I just convinced him that he wanted me to have it.”) that Tony began drifting to sleep on the couch before they’d gotten through a third of the pile.

“Dearest, would you like to go to bed?” Azra asked.

Tony squinted sleepily at him. “Y’don’t have a bed.”

“I do, actually—or, strictly speaking, _you_ do, upstairs.” Azra tugged at his lapels. “I…ah…brought your bedroom over from my old rooms when I moved in here.”

“You…oh,” Tony said, astutely, as this sank in.

The bedroom, if possible, was even more comfortable than it had been in Azra’s old rooms, and Tony immediately knew he preferred it to the bedroom in his own lodgings. Whether this was because Azra was _very good_ at comfort, or because Azra sat himself (with a stack of books) in a chair near the bed to keep Tony company while he slept, Tony was far too sleepy to decide.

The next few days were some of the more blissful that Tony could remember experiencing—waking to the sight of his angel in the mornings, kissing with increasing regularity, taking outings to parks and little eateries and plays.

An unfortunately familiar part of his mind began to whisper that it couldn’t last, that he’d wake from this dream soon enough. He did his best to ignore it.

It was on their first trip back to St. James Park that he had to admit the possibility of…real concerns.

“Angel,” said Tony, as the angel took his hand on their favorite bench, “there’s a human staring at us.”

“Yes, indeed there is,” said Azra comfortably.

“Uh,” Tony said, “you know that humans can be…unpleasant…about men showing this kind of affection toward each other…right?”

“My dear,” Azra said, smiling gently, “you’ve reached a very impressive age, but I do have a few millennia and a few civilizations on you. I’m well aware of human attitudes toward expressions of love. And I might add that the attitudes in this little corner of time and place are by no means universals.”

“Alright, sure,” Tony tried again, “but, _in_ this little corner, humans are awful about that, and one of them is staring at us.”

“An advantage of being an angel,” Azra sidestepped irritatingly, “is that it’s very easy to…persuade humans not to notice one. Or, in our case, two.”

“Huh?” Tony responded blankly.

“At the moment, anyone with hostile intent will find themselves singularly uninterested in us, my dear. So the fact of that young man staring so avidly is very interesting. But not threatening.”

“Huh,” Tony replied. Then: “Doesn’t your lot—uh—also disapprove of that sort of…um…affection?”

“Heaven, you mean? Certainly _not_ ,” Azra stated. “That sort of…prejudice…is entirely a human invention. Though…” he sighed, “I do wish _my lot_ , as you say, would be a bit more…direct…in conveying that to the humans. I’ve asked, but apparently it would contradict the free will policy.”

Tony grimaced, reflecting that Heaven didn’t seem to have a problem with contradicting free will or whatever when they were smiting or sending floods or—or the other things they got up to, but he wasn’t about to start another fight in St. James Park, so he let the subject drop.

Azra handed the curious young man a calling card as he and Tony strolled together out of the park. A few days later, the young man turned up at the bookshop.

Tony realized, with a bit of a jolt, that Azra hadn’t stopped his human-sheltering practices while Tony had been asleep. A few others turned up from time to time—a young man whom most of the world insisted on calling a woman, who could be himself for a few hours in Azra’s shop. A pair of women who took each other’s hands as soon as they were safely inside the door. An older man who apparently simply wanted to read somewhere quiet. They all found peace and a bit of safety in Azra’s shop, which (Azra explained quietly to Tony) was warded in the same way his old lodgings had once been—nobody with hostile intentions could enter. Tony realized, to his own shock, that he…didn’t mind…getting to know the humans. He even…liked…a few of them.

When they weren’t sheltering assorted humans or exploring London, they began exploring each other’s bodies, following a frankly excruciating conversation Azra began with:

“Tony… _do_ vampires engage in…ah…physical intimacy?”

Tony peered at him over the rim of his wine glass; they were a few glasses in at that point.

“Huh?” he asked wittily. “Like what?”

“Well, we’ve tried kissing, of course, and it’s been delightful. But back when I had human lovers, there were—ah— _other_ activities we pursued, and if you’d be amenable, I’d—”

“Wait,” Tony interrupted. “Wait. You had _human lovers_?”

Azra blinked at him. “Well, only a few, and not since…oh, it’s been millennia, but yes.”

“You—you can _do_ that?”

Azra raised his eyebrows. “I’m an angel, dear boy, not a monk.”

“Yes—but—yes, but—” Tony spluttered. “ _Angels_ can…can do that?”

Now Azra looked a bit shifty. “Well, it’s not forbidden, strictly speaking. In any event,” he hurried on, “I was asking whether _vampires_ do. Or can. There are rumors, of course, but it’s very hard to find reliable information on that topic.”

“Ehhh,” Tony answered, shifting his shoulders and trying not to think of Azra researching vampire intimacy, “sometimes…yeah…they, we, eurghh, some, yes.”

“Oh, that’s terribly fascinating, dear boy,” Azra beamed at him. “And”—he tugged at his coat sleeves, looked down and back up—“what about you? Is that something you…enjoyed?”

“Um. I never had the…energy,” Tony explained awkwardly. “It takes an effort.”

“Oh, it requires an Effort for angels also,” said Azra brightly, then frowned thoughtfully. “Although I imagine that means something rather different for us. Ah—in any case—is it…now that you _do_ have energy…is it something you find…interesting?”

“You mean with you?” Tony demanded, trying unsuccessfully to harness the wild hope surging through him.

“Ah, well, if you don’t want to, it’s quite al—”

“Are you _joking_?” Tony interrupted again, seizing Azra’s hand. “Angel, I had no idea it was an option. _Of course_ I—for—for anyone’s sake, yes.”

“ _Oh_ ,” said Azra, his eyes lighting in that soft way that rivaled his delighted smile in terms of its effect on Tony’s heart. “Darling.” He pulled Tony’s hand to his lips. “That’s wonderful.”

They forgot about the wine for the rest of the evening.

Their next excruciating conversation was a few days later, and Tony had to admit to himself that it was his own fault. It began after he and Azra had…indulged in intimacies…and were now indulging in some post-intimacy rest. Tony was learning that, even now that he was fully energized, the effort required for…intimacies…still had the tendency to lull him into a contented sleep afterward. He was adjusting to that. He was _not_ yet adjusted to waking back up to the sight of Azra, usually fully nude, gazing contentedly at him, sometimes running a hand through Tony’s hair.

“Sorry I get so sleepy,” Tony said on this occasion as he resurfaced, trying to focus on something less overwhelming than the unreasonably glorious angelic body next to him. “Prob’ly boring for you.”

“Oh, nonsense, darling,” said Azra, smiling without interrupting his gazing. “I could look at you for hours.”

“Nrrnkghh,” said Tony.

“Yes, dearest?”

Tony shifted his shoulders as much as he could while stretched full length across the bed. Ridiculous angel, saying things like that. “I never expected you to be…interested in—uh—bodies, in that way.”

Azra’s eyebrows arched gently. “Your body is _very_ aesthetically pleasing, my dear.”

“ _Aesthetically pleasing_?” Tony echoed. “You sound like a Greek philosopher.”

“Well, I rather was one.”

Tony snorted.

“If I’d known you at the time,” said Azra, slowly running fingers down Tony’s arm, “I imagine I’d have had a great deal more to say about the ideal of beauty.”

“Mmggnnph,” Tony said, burying his face in Azra’s shoulder. “If I were human, I’d be blushing.” He took a few moments to compose himself from…whatever vampires did that definitely wasn’t blushing, and looked back up at Azra. “Besides, _my_ body? What about yours, angel? The first time I saw you, I thought—” he skidded to a stop, his hand freezing where it had been stroking the soft roll of Azra’s belly. When he’d first seen Azra, he’d been _hunting_ him; why the Hell did he have to bring _that_ up?

Azra smiled in a way that wasn’t entirely happy. “I imagine I looked like a ridiculously easy mark,” he sighed.

“What? No!” Tony protested. “That—that wasn’t it at all! I—I thought—you were—oh, Hell.” He buried his face again, in the bed this time. “Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve mentioned it.”

“ _Tony_ ,” Azra remonstrated, gathering him closer. “It’s fine, dearest, there’s no fault here at all. We didn’t know each other yet. If you recall, I thought of you primarily as a fascinating puzzle to be solved, rather than…well, the remarkable being that you are. Neither of us were pure in our motives, but we found each other, and that’s truly all that matters.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Tony’s head (the only part of Tony his lips could currently reach, given Tony’s refusal to un-hide his face). “Oh dear. I must admit that now I’m dreadfully curious as to what your first thought was.”

Tony wriggled his head closer into Azra’s chest and squeezed his eyes shut. “D’l’cious,” he mumbled.

“What was that, my dear?”

Tony felt his shoulders tightening, but he supposed he was committed now. “Delicious. That was my first thought. That you looked delicious.”

He still didn’t look up at Azra, and at first the angel said nothing, only drew his fingers gently down Tony’s spine.

“Delicious,” Azra repeated eventually, his tone…thoughtful. Tony finally laid hold of what little courage he had and shifted his head so that he could see Azra.

A slow smile was lighting the angel’s face with delight.

“Do you know,” he said, “that may be the kindest compliment I’ve ever heard about my corporation.”

Tony blinked. “I compliment your corporation all the time,” he said indignantly.

“Yes, dear, and I appreciate it greatly,” Azra said, finding Tony’s hand to squeeze it. “I only mean that…you didn’t even know me at the time. I’m…ah…flattered that you found me…well. Appealing.” He tilted his head against the sheets. “Or would any angel look appealing?”

“Huh? Oh—no, definitely not,” Tony said, thinking of Gabriel and what’s-his-name, Sandals, with an internal shudder. “Some are hard, and some are…stringy…and…y’know, like…” He waved a hand, stopping himself from saying “like different cuts of meat,” because that would definitely sound horrifying.

Azra nodded. “Like different cuts of meat, I suppose,” he mused. “Have you ever thought about what I would be like to bite, my dear?”

“No,” Tony said, much too quickly.

Azra raised his eyebrows. “Oh, come now. You must have at the beginning, before we knew each other well.”

“Mmrrggk,” Tony protested, remembering his desperate efforts across the centuries to suppress his fantasies of that soft, smooth skin and the way his fangs would sink into it before piercing it, the way Azra’s taste would flood through his senses—

“You do realize it doesn’t bother me, dear boy?” Azra queried gently. “I would hope I’d be…pleasant…for you to bite, rather than…distasteful.”

“Errmnnn,” Tony squirmed. “Prob—Prob’ly. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not ever going to do that to you.”

“Yes, I see.” Azra was quiet for a few moments. “What if I…wanted to be?”

Tony squinted at him. “Wanted to be what?”

“Well…bitten, I suppose.”

“You—why would you—you’d _want_ that?”

Azra fidgeted. “I…think it’s a…possibility. Some…some people do, do they not?”

Tony was not blushing, because vampires did not blush. “Some—some people, yes. It’s a, a thing. Sometimes.”

Azra most definitely _was_ blushing. “It’s only that…when I had human lovers…I do remember rather enjoying…ah…love bites. I believe that’s the term.”

“Ngk,” said Tony.

They tried it out in gradual steps, for Tony’s comfort rather than Azra’s; Tony required far more convincing that it wouldn’t actually damage his angel. But a tiny bite to Azra’s little finger only resulted in a small bruise. Azra couldn’t fully miracle it away, but it faded on its own over a few days.

It was another fortnight before Tony felt daring enough to attempt a bite during…intimacies.

His guiltily suppressed fantasies of that action, it turned out, had never compared _at all_ to the reality.

Drinking Azra’s blood from little vials also came nowhere near the experience of taking in his blood the proper vampiric way. He’d been overwhelmed with Azra’s taste the first several times he’d consumed his blood, but this—this _engulfed_ him, flooding all of his senses at once, leaving him gasping, dazed and floating—

“ _Oh_ ,” he heard Azra’s voice, still breathless (the angel’s own enthusiastic reaction at the time had left no doubt of how _he_ felt about being bitten). “You’ve—you’ve never done _that_ before.”

It took several long moments before Tony realized he wasn’t talking about the biting.

“I’d begun to think the idea that vampires could fly was just a myth,” Azra continued.

Tony slewed his head to the right to look at him—well, to the right and slightly down. It wasn’t only his mind that was floating; he was _actually_ floating.

“Takes…effort,” he mumbled. “Energy.”

“I see,” said Azra. “Should I…can I take it to mean that…the experience was pleasant for you?”

Tony choked. Or snorted. Chorted.

“Angel…” he managed, sinking back down to join Azra on the bed and tangle himself around him as tightly as he could. “You’re…I can’t…don’t have…’s too much…words. Not words. Mmmggkngk.”

“Ah,” said Azra, smiling audibly. “I’m very glad, my darling.”

It was a good thing that Azra already wore collared shirts, Tony noted over the next weeks and months, because he now carried a mark or two from Tony nearly all the time. He refused to use a miracle even to encourage them to heal more quickly.

“I _enjoy_ having evidence of the pleasure we bring each other, dearest,” he said, cupping Tony’s cheek and kissing him deeply. And Tony did too—so much that he occasionally had to concentrate to keep himself on the ground when he saw the edge of a bruise over the top of Azra’s primly-buttoned collar…but…

“But, angel,” he said, in yet another excruciating conversation, “Don’t you think…your…the other…your bosses. They’ll see. You won’t—you won’t be able to hide me. Not for long. From your lot.”

Azra lifted his chin. “I don’t wish to hide you.”

“Oh, angel.” Tony went weak. “But, but they won’t let you—they won’t let us—”

“I’ll just have to explain to them, to help them see,” said Azra. “They’ve—we’ve—been wrong, all this time, about vampires. They think—I used to think—that vampires were irredeemably evil—and I do apologize, my dear; it was before I met you. And, of course, we were wrong. You’re living proof—well, I suppose _not_ technically living— _visible_ proof, in any case—of just how wrong we were.”

“Azra,” said Tony, the first stirrings of panic invading the idyllic dream he and Azra had created here, “they’d smite me on sight. You can’t just show me to them and expect them to…to—”

“Dearest, I wouldn’t dream of risking you that way.” Azra stroked his hand reassuringly. “Of course I’ll be talking to them first, preparing the way. They’ll have to understand how silly it’s been to make the generalizations they’ve been making all this time. Once we get that cleared up, things will be fine.”

Tony closed his eyes. “That’s not going to happen.”

“It has to,” said Azra, and there was a conviction there that Tony loved even if he couldn’t believe in it. “Because I’m not giving you up.”

Tony kept his eyes closed, because if he opened them and saw his angel’s loving, faithful, hopeful face, he’d want to shake him, make him see the truth about Them—how they didn’t deserve him, could never be worthy of the trust he placed in them— _why can’t you see it; you’re so clever; how can someone so clever be so stupid_ —

And he wasn’t willing to do that, couldn’t possibly bring himself to shatter the illusion they were fashioning, that they could be together and build their own world. This beautiful dream was just a dream. But he’d stay in it for as long as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly angsty ending for this chapter, but don't worry; it's just to set up the happy ending in the next chapter!


	6. Secure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Azra's life is lovely, but the forces of Heaven can't be avoided forever...  
> (But don't worry, because this is where they get their happy ending.)
> 
> Do heed the content warning!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning!  
> Azra and Tony have their final confrontation with the “other angels” here. It reads very much like splitting from a family of origin that refuses to accept one’s LGBTQ+ identity (both rejecting and being rejected by said “family”). There is, of course, a very affirming and loving ending (that doesn’t involve that “family”), but do be aware going in that the angels say hurtful, non-affirming things to Azra and Tony.

It was well over a century before things came crashing down.

Tony noted, though neither of them called attention to it, that Azra began visiting Heaven more often, turning in his reports preemptively so that his angelic superiors wouldn’t need to visit him in his Earthly dwellings. He rarely said much about those visits, but Tony _hated_ the way he seemed quieter, diminished, for days afterward. Other than those interludes, their life moved along comfortably, with occasional exceptions due to rather massive human wars and Azra’s continued tendency to land himself in trouble (not that Tony really _minded_ the opportunities to swoop to Azra’s rescue from time to time, from Nazi spies or whatever else he fell foul of). Azra also insisted on overtaxing himself healing humans, ending up bedridden once a year or so from particularly troubling cases.

“What would you do if you didn’t have me to cover for you?” Tony demanded, pacing in the bedroom above the bookshop in 1955 or so, having practically had to carry Azra home from a hospital ward.

“I don’t want to think at all about what I’d do if I didn’t have you, dear,” Azra said from the bed, weakly but with a soft smile. Tony couldn’t find much to say after that.

Less trying were the humans that still tended to collect in the bookshop. They shifted gradually over the years, new ones appearing and older ones moving on (in a variety of ways). Tony had forgotten, a bit, about human lifespans, and was uncomfortably surprised to find himself genuinely grieving the first one who reached the end of his. Azra held Tony’s hand during the funeral, and tactfully didn’t comment on his tears, and then held him steady in the bed over the bookshop afterward.

Possibly more heartbreaking, though, were the regulars who became…well…irregulars. Humans sought shelter in Azra’s shop because it was safe, because they weren’t safe elsewhere in their lives. But some…tried to force themselves to fit back into those unsafe places.

“He keeps saying they mean well,” the partner of one of these mourned. “That they have his best interests at heart. That they love him, but they just don’t understand. But they _don’t_ love him. They don’t care how much it hurts him, as long as he fits himself into their little mold of what they think he should be.”

The other regulars rallied around to comfort him. Tony looked to Azra—who was staring into the distance, his expression so lost and stricken that Tony stood to go to him before he’d thought at all—but before he could move toward him, Azra shook his head sharply, the hurt smoothed into something guardedly neutral, and went to pour some wine.

Some returned eventually, and new regulars always arrived, a steady trickle over the years. The bookshop weathered inventions (Tony was particularly pleased when humans created reliable alternatives to horses), a war that was supposed to end wars, another war that proved that wrong, years of love and protests, a horrible new disease that drove Azra nearly frantic, the turn of the millennium (Azra’s sixth turnover but Tony’s first; he’d expected it to be a bit more exciting, really)…and, Tony thought, finally seemed to settle down, by his standards.

He really, really shouldn’t have thought that.

In retrospect, they’d gotten careless. No other angels had visited Earth in ages, at least not anywhere near London. Tony still maintained a flat in Mayfair—he’d taken up an indoor plant hobby, and kept a small jungle in one of the rooms—but he spent nearly all his time at the bookshop. He’d let himself stop thinking about the danger of leaving evidence of…himself…around Azra. Evidence of himself _on_ Azra, in the form of bite marks.

He didn’t even realize they’d been found out until it was too late.

He and Azra had been, for once, at his flat, lounging after a long (and blissful) night and a lazy morning, when he’d taken the Bentley to get take-out, from one of Azra’s favorite little places that somehow didn’t do delivery yet. Azra himself had stayed in the bed with a favorite book, and Tony was anticipating the sight of his soft body under the rumpled covers, his glowing smile as Tony brought in their food—

He didn’t see the smoke until he was nearly back to his flat, and it never occurred to him that it could be coming _from_ his flat until he was practically in front of it.

It was fully engulfed—the entire building—flames—roaring, surging, devouring flames—

“AZRA!” Tony screamed, abandoning the Bentley on the curb and charging toward what should have been his home—

The heat beat him back. He staggered on the pavement, shook his head to clear it, launched himself forward—

He couldn’t get near. He summoned all his strength and tried again. Vampires weren’t any more sensitive to fire than humans, but something was _wrong_ about this fire—Tony could feel it scorching him from yards away, as if he might go up in flames before he even reached it—it was screaming in his ears, blurring his vision—he couldn’t _get_ there—but he _had_ to; his angel was in there, and—

“ **Tony, NO!!** ” resounded from somewhere—everywhere—and Tony had already stopped, crumpling to the ground in response to the command, before he’d even registered the words—

That was Azra’s voice.

He grabbed onto that and held it, because he could barely hear or see or think, but he’d always know Azra’s voice, and that was Azra. Somewhere.

He was barely aware when hands—arms—wings—wrapped around him and pulled him away, cooling, soothing—he only knew that Azra’s scent had returned and was surrounding him—Azra’s voice was in his ear; he had no idea what Azra was saying, but he knew it was him—

They landed on…on something solid, anyway—

Landed? Tony hadn’t even been aware that they’d left the ground. He stumbled; Azra’s very solid arms supported him, but they were the only thing holding him up.

“Tony—darling—oh, my dear, are you—” Azra’s hands were frantically patting his face, his hair, his shoulders. Tony peered at him. The angel was blurry. Or possibly everything was blurry. It was like being very, very drunk, but also…painful.

“Y’r alllright,” he muttered vaguely, trying to pat Azra as well but mostly missing.

“Of course _I’m_ alright, dearest,” Azra fretted. “It’s you who’s—oh, bother.” He snapped his fingers, and a tiny knife appeared. He’d applied it to his finger and dribbled blood into Tony’s mouth before Tony registered what he was doing.

“Oh,” said Tony. “… _oh_.” He got to his feet. The world was beginning to steady around him. “What the _Hell_.”

“Ah…the opposite of that, I’m afraid,” Azra said tightly. “That…that was _holy_ fire.”

“Holy fire,” Tony echoed, gazing around now that he was capable of it. They were on a roof a few blocks away from his flat—which was still visibly blazing away in the distance, and—“Azra. There were _people_ in there.” His neighbor with the loudly yapping dog, the family with the children who began shrieking every morning before the sun rose, the man who cooked extremely smelly food—

“There weren’t,” said Azra, gazing the same direction, his face stony. “Or, well, there _were_ , but I got them out. They’ll be confused, but alive.”

“Oh,” said Tony, grabbing Azra’s hand as relief swept through him. “But…angel, I don’t—why—nnngggh—” He gestured toward the column of flame.

Azra crumpled. “Oh, Tony, they were after _you_. And—and they didn’t care if anyone else got hurt, or….” He took in a breath, his hand tightening on Tony’s.

“The—the other angels?” Tony clarified, unnecessarily.

He could see Azra trying to tighten his jaw. “Yes, it was—they always—you were always in more danger from them, and I’ve been terribly careless, and—if things had been different, you would’ve—” He closed his eyes. “We have to get to the bookshop,” he said, not firmly but striving for it. “Do you feel up to flying, my dear?”

They flew to the bookshop. And crashed through the skylight.

“I’m not sure—angel, maybe we—uhhhh—”

“Just hold on, dear boy!”

And they were through, somehow without glass shattering around them, and Tony had to remind himself that his angel was, after all, an angel.

“I do apologize, my dear,” Azra was saying as they landed softly in the center of the ground floor. “I’m sure that was quite alarming. It’s just that I’m sure my…ah…colleagues…are watching the entrances at street level.”

“Your colleagues,” Tony started, but—“uhhh…why’s it so green in here?”

“Ah—I miracled your plants over, when—when the fire started—I do hope they all made it safely; I know how much work you’ve put into them.”

Sure enough, Tony now recognized the various inhabitants of his plant room, now occupying improbable positions around and on top of Azra’s stacks of books. He tried to find his voice to thank Azra, except that—

“ **Azra!** ” boomed a voice from outside. “Azra, we know you’re in there! Come out; come home with us!”

Azra closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “That would be Gabriel.”

“We know you’ve been consorting with creatures of evil!” came another voice, harsher but with an undertone of…excitement. “We’ve seen his marks on you.”

“That’s—”

“Sandals,” said Tony, angling to get a view through a window without getting too close. There was a third angel as well, more feminine, with hair pulled sternly back. She placed her hands on the shoulders of Gabriel and Sandals in what Tony guessed was a silencing manner.

“You don’t have to leave, Azra,” she said. Her voice was a sort of smooth facsimile of soothing. “You can keep your books and your human indulgences. But the vampire must go.” (Tony heard a sharp intake of breath from Azra.) “You know he must.”

“Michael,” muttered Azra. “Oh dear,” he whispered. “Oh, why can’t they just…” His face tightened in a way that Tony knew to be holding back tears.

“Azra,” said Tony carefully, “not that I’m complaining, but why don’t they just…come in?”

“We’re still warded,” Azra said. “No one with hostile intentions can come in. They can break through the wards eventually, but it would likely destroy the shop. Apparently they’re saving that as a last resort.” His voice was calm, sort of, but his hands were twisting together.

“So,” Tony said, endeavoring for calm as well, “can we…drive them away? Work a…an anti-angel spell?” He knew it was a ridiculous suggestion, but it was all he could think of.

“No—not—not against archangels, no.”

“How long do we have, then?”

Azra’s eyes went to the door again. “Only as long as they’re willing to wait, I’m afraid.” Now Azra’s eyes went to Tony, but away again quickly.

“Azra…” Tony said, although he didn’t know where to go from there.

“Oh, go on and say it,” Azra said, aiming for tetchy, but too shaky to quite make it.

“Say what?”

Azra frowned at him. “That you told me so.” His shoulders sagged again. “You’ve been trying to tell me for…for decades, at least. I should have listened. I’m so sorry, dear.”

“Trying to tell you…” Tony prompted. Perhaps it was selfish, but he wanted to be sure of what Azra meant.

Azra glanced to the closed door, the only barrier keeping his…family…from assaulting him. “They’re supposed to be beings of love. Protectors of humanity. And yet they were so intent on…on taking you away from me that, that they didn’t care how many human lives they took on the way, and”—he’d started to pace—“and—oh, I’ve known all along, really, that they’re callous, cruel—but…oh, why didn’t I see it clearly, and what are we going to _do_?”

“I could”—Tony forced his voice to stay flat—“go on out there. Let them have me.”

Azra froze mid-pace, his face snapping toward Tony. “ _What_?”

“If they…got rid of me,” Tony said, his voice nearly as matter-of-fact as he wanted it to be, “they’d leave you alone, right? Or…accept you again?”

Azra’s nostrils flared. “How,” he said, quiet in a very alarming way, “would your murder be in any way an acceptable outcome?”

“Azra, I never expected you to choose me over…over all of Heaven. Over your…eternal family. That wouldn’t be fair to you. Look, we can just—”

“ **Shut. Up**.” Azra was so furious that he was going a bit incandescent. “Don’t you _dare_ — _they’re_ not my family, not if—” He made a visible effort to remain in his human form. “If they don’t want me without you, then I don’t want them. _You_ are who I want as my eternal family, Tony. Don’t you know that by n—”

He broke off, his face going both unfocused and _more_ intense, which shouldn’t have even been possible. “Oh,” he said, wonderingly. “We never have, have we?”

His eyes went to Tony.

“Dearest,” he said, and his focus was back and trained entirely on Tony, who nearly took a step backward, “I’ve been remiss.” He took both of Tony’s hands in both of his. “I’ve never said, not in so many words, how much I love you, more than anything else in God’s creation, more than”—he took in a breath—“more than angels, more than Heaven. I pledge that love in front of God Herself, and—and I don’t answer to _them_ ”—he gestured toward the closed door behind him, indicating the angels waiting outside—“but I’d pledge it in front of them as well. I pledge it _forever_ , dearest—neither you nor anyone else should ever doubt that I love you, for all of my life, however long that may be.”

Tony opened his mouth and found he had no voice to speak with; nothing could get through the tears streaming down his face and constricting his throat. He tried again.

“Angel—” he managed, and the word gave him the strength he needed. Angel’s blood, Azra’s love—maybe they’d always been the same thing. “I don’t know if I’m one of God’s…beings,” he said, ignoring the way his voice shook like a ship’s deck in a hurricane, “but if She’s listening, yeah, Azra, I…I love you, I’d say it in front of anyone, I’ll keep saying it forever, or as long as we have, and however long I have, I want it to be with you.” It seemed likely that would only be a few minutes, but if saying their love out loud was what Azra wanted to do with those few minutes, Tony would do it.

“Oh,” Azra whispered, his eyes shining with tears and—and love, so much love—and kissed Tony, swiftly and firmly despite both of their tears.

“Keep hold of me, love,” Azra said. He set his shoulders, walked to the door hand in hand with Tony, and flung it open.

“What is it that you want?” he demanded of the angels waiting outside.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “We’re rescuing you from this…thing…that has you enthralled in its evil clutches,” he said, in his aggravating “this is obvious” tone.

“You most certainly are not,” snapped Azra. “And his name is Tony. I won’t have you being rude to him.”

“Being _rude_?” Gabriel echoed incredulously. “You are consorting with an enemy of Heaven!”

Azra squeezed Tony’s hand and drew himself up. “I am _consorting_ with a being who cares for hurt children, defends those who need it from those who would harm them, and shelters those who have nowhere else to go. If a being like that is an enemy of Heaven, then Heaven is in the wrong.”

All three angels drew back in shock.

“You _dare_ ,” gasped Gabriel.

“I do, yes,” said Azra. Tony could tell by the clutch of his hand that he wasn’t nearly as confident as he made himself sound. He gave the angel’s hand a reassuring squeeze of his own.

“You—you—” Gabriel sputtered. The one with the carefully contained hair—Michael—who was undoubtedly smarter than Gabriel—put a hand on his arm.

“Azra,” she said carefully, coaxingly, “clearly he has deceived you. That’s what vampires do, you know. He’s influenced you to take on this…lifestyle…that’s against God’s plan. Listen to us. You _know_ this is wrong.”

Azra took in a breath that Tony felt in his own being. “There was a time when I thought I could help you see the truth. Perhaps I was always wrong. I’ve seen what you’re willing to do to prove what you believe to be your righteousness. But I will say one thing plainly, at least.” Azra was beginning to glow, although it wasn’t hurting Tony. “This isn’t a _lifestyle_ ,” he continued, a touch of thunder in his voice. “This is _love_. We have pledged our love to each other before God Herself, and She has accepted us.”

The angels staggered.

“You’re—you can’t mean—” Michael choked out. “You’re _married_?”

 _We are_? thought Tony.

“Before the Almighty herself,” Azra repeated.

Sandals actually looked to the sky, as if expecting a divine lightning strike or something.

The sky remained obstinately clear. It was a nice day, actually.

“You, vampire,” Gabriel demanded roughly (Azra’s breath hissed fiercely through his teeth; Tony squeezed his hand again to stop his objection), “is this true? You and this angel are…married?”

For the first time, Tony felt Azra’s stance waver, as his angel turned toward him, his face a tentative question—

“Yes,” said Tony, declaring it to the skies and the streets and the enemies at the door, but most of all to Azra, “I love him, and only him, and I said it in front of God, and I’ll say it in front of you and anyone else who needs to hear it.” He would have said more, wanted to say more—how Azra had saved him, had saved so many humans, had done everything Heaven asked of him and never complained—how Azra was _so much better_ than any of them, than any other angel—

For once, he yielded to sense, thinking that deliberately provoking three deadly supernatural beings might not be the best choice when their goal was to convince them to go away.

“So yeah,” he said instead, “we’re married. And you’re out of your celestial minds if you think we’re leaving each other. You’re not going to pull us apart.”

He wasn’t looking at Azra, but nonetheless he could feel his angel’s glowing smile, the one he’d known, centuries ago, that he’d do anything for. And really, even if the angels smote them right here where they stood, going out wrapped up in Azra’s smile wasn’t at all a bad way to go.

“What God has joined, let no one tear asunder,” said Azra, no longer hinting at thunder but getting very close to the real thing. “ _You_ know that’s not just advice,” he said to the angels.

The angels stared at Azra and Tony for several long seconds, until Gabriel turned his back abruptly, pulling the other two into a huddle. Tony felt Azra wilt very slightly with relief at the removal of their regard.

He thought he should say something, provide some witty banter, but all of his thoughts kept circling back to Azra, claiming him in public; Azra, proclaiming that Tony was better than angels; Azra, loving _him_ more than his family.

No—Azra c _hoosing Tony_ as his family.

At some point, he wondered if he should do anything about the tears streaming down his cheeks, and decided he wouldn’t.

The wait for the—the _gits_ (Tony could no longer stand calling them _angels_ ; only his angel deserved that title) to finish their conference felt eternal as he and Azra waited, ordinary human foot traffic bending around the three supernatural beings without noticing them—until it was over, at which point it abruptly felt much too short. All three…asses...turned to them in unison and fixed them with what were no doubt supposed to be severe gazes. Only Michael succeeded.

“You are choosing to reject Heaven,” said Gabriel, disdainfully but with an undercurrent of astonishment.

Azra’s soft face was stonier than Tony had ever seen it. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Then Heaven has no choice than to reject you,” Gabriel said. His face was made for falsely collegial smiles, and was having a very hard time projecting fiery condemnation effectively. “You can never return, as long as you are…allied…with—with _him_.” He waved a hand at Tony in the same way someone would wave away an unpleasant smell.

Azra’s hand clenched harder on Tony’s. “I have no desire to return to any place where my husband is unwelcome.” For all his soft gentleness, he emanated coldly blazing fury far better than Gabriel.

“Right,” said Gabriel, nodding petulantly. “Right. Well, see that you don’t.”

“You shall not attempt to harm Tony again in any way,” Azra stated flatly.

Sandals’s face was overtaken by a snarl, and Tony got the impression that Michael was physically holding him back.

“We have no intent to harm him if he avoids further corruption or targeting of true angels,” said Michael, coolly.

Azra’s breath hissed furiously between his teeth as he somehow managed to straighten his shoulders even more, and Tony knew he was about to defend him again, and his unnecessary heart swelled with love (although that wasn't a new thing)—but he had a bigger priority.

“What about you?” he interjected urgently. “They can’t hurt you either.” He turned back to the three beings on the pavement. “You can’t…come back with some kind of worse punishment. You have to leave him alone.”

The three of them regarded him with affronted disgust.

“We’ve just banned him from Heaven itself and from all interaction with the Heavenly Host,” said Gabriel, incredulously. “There _is_ no worse punishment.”

“Rrright,” said Tony. “So that means you’re…you’re done with him? I mean, no _other_ punishments?”

Sandals, again, looked ready to try out other punishments, but Michael spoke for them.

“We will have no further interaction with him,” she said with cold finality. “As far as we are concerned, he no longer exists.”

Tony felt Azra take in a slow breath. “Well,” his angel said, and somehow his voice was _pleasant_. “Lovely knowing you all. May we meet on a better occasion.”

Gabriel’s lip curled. “Shut your stupid mouth.”

Tony twitched, nearly launched himself at him. He didn’t, somehow—Azra’s grip on his hand had turned suddenly to iron, for one thing—and…and then they were gone.

For a moment, Tony stood numbly, staring at the spot where they had just been, not quite believing that they had truly departed. Then he turned slowly to Azra, who was staring just as blankly at the pavement, and moved mechanically to face Tony.

“Inside,” was all he said.

“Uhhhyeah,” Tony agreed.

They sort of tumbled through the door, slammed it shut, and fell against it, both breathing heavily, for creatures who didn’t need to breathe. Tony wiped his face with a wildly trembling hand, trying out the idea of _they’re gone; they’re gone and they won’t bother him anymore_ —and he wasn’t anywhere close to grasping it yet, but somewhere in the distance he could feel the beginnings of something swooping, something light, something that might be relief and might be more, something like _elation_ —

Azra fumbled several times as he locked the door, then turned, stumbling and grabbing for the counter.

“Angel?” Tony asked, reaching for him in alarm. Azra’s celestial glow had faded; his face was greyish. “C’mon, let’s go sit down.”

Azra didn’t reply, just leaned against Tony while he guided him to the couch.

They sat down together. Azra rested his forehead on Tony’s shoulder, his breathing ragged in Tony’s ear. He shakily found Tony’s hand with both of his, held on to it like a lifeline while Tony anchored him close with his other arm, tracing soothing lines up and down his back.

“Are you hurt?” Tony was berating himself for not having checked for this right away. “Did they—did they—”

“No, no, dear boy,” Azra whispered. “I’m…ah…just give me a few moments, if you don’t mind.”

“Anything,” Tony said. “Can—can I get you something? Water, or, or tea, or—”

Azra’s hand tightened on his. “Please stay with me.”

“’Course—of course, angel. ‘Course, love. I’m not going anywhere.”

It took a while.

Tony remembered a time, once, when he’d been unable to do anything other than sob in Azra’s lap. He remembered Azra’s gentle, calming hands and voice, and he silently thanked any Being who might be paying attention that he was able to do the same for Azra now.

Slowly, Azra’s breathing returned to something approaching normal. Slowly, his grip on Tony’s hand softened. Slowly, his leaning into Tony became more of an embrace and less of a collapse.

“It’s just—” he said, finally, hoarsely.

“Mm-hmm,” said Tony, still rubbing his back, slowly, rhythmically, the time-softened coat warm under his cool fingers.

“Six thousand years,” said Azra. “I—I did _everything_ they asked.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, comfortingly. “You did your best for them.”

“ _Why_?” demanded Azra, sitting up enough to meet Tony’s gaze with wide and frenzied eyes. “Why didn’t I see? Why did I waste so much time? Why did I give them so much when they—they _never_ deserved it?”

“Uhh,” Tony shifted gears rapidly, “they—they were your family. Of course you wanted to give—of course you did what they wanted.”

“I believed they were _good_ ,” Azra nearly spat.

“Y-yeah—err, they’re…angels”—Tony flexed his shoulders—“Heaven, all that—they’re supposed to be good.”

“ _You_ knew they weren’t.”

“Nnnggghh, I mean, they tried to kill me any time they saw me,” Tony said awkwardly. “Of course I could see their bad side.”

“But that’s exactly what I mean, Tony. You’re…you’re the best person I know, and they tried to kill you. That should’ve—I should’ve—I should’ve realized ages ago how…how _corrupt_ they are. How could I have been so _stupid_?”

“Sshh, shh, angel—you weren’t stupid.” Tony mentally slapped himself for ever having thought it. “You were faithful. Loyal. You believed the best of them because _you’re_ good. You’re better than any of them. You believed the best of me, too, remember?”

Azra managed a tiny, wobbly smile for an instant. “ _You_ deserved it, dear boy.”

“I _really_ didn’t some of the time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Azra sagged against him; breathed quietly for some moments. Eventually he brought Tony’s hand to his cheek. “You’ve been so patient with me, for so long, dearest.”

“Not a problem,” Tony said instantly. “I’ll be patient with you for as long as you need. Always.” He kissed Azra’s temple, where the crow’s feet would crinkle when he smiled, and silently vowed to make that happen as soon and as often as he could. “Tea?” he offered again.

“Mmm,” murmured Azra. “Only if I come with you.”

So they made tea together, and drank it together, quietly, in the bookshop’s tiny kitchen.

“Uhngggh,” said Tony after a while, as something occurred to him, finally. “Can—can I call you my husband now?”

Azra looked up from his tea, taking in a swift breath, and _there_ was that light in his eyes again. “Would—would you want to?”

“Would I—‘course I want to; are you out of your mind?”

Azra gave—not _quite_ his usual smile, but he was approaching it by degrees. “I’d like to think I’m not. I—I—well, I wasn’t sure if you’d want that sort of thing—human labels, I suppose.”

“I—ehhurr—I wasn’t sure if, if angels did that sort of thing.”

“Do you know,” said Azra, setting down his teacup very precisely, “I believe I don’t give a damn what sort of thing angels do.”

It took a while.

Weeks went by before Azra let himself sleep again. Tony saw him flinch every now and then when the shop door opened unexpectedly. They researched panic attacks after a night Azra spent pacing, seemingly unable to stop, his chest unreasonably tight and his breath coming in shallow gasps.

Tony, for his part, considered also giving up sleep, when he began waking up, shouting and terrified, from dreams where scorching fire kept him from reaching Azra. So his angel made sure to stay with him when he slept, always in reach.

It took a while, but they learned more and more about how to comfort each other. And slowly, things became…was normal the right word? If so, it wasn’t the same normal as before. Before, normal always meant that they were hidden, technically. Tony had thought that he didn’t mind the secrecy—he was a vampire, after all; hiding and skulking were in his nature. But now…it was as though he’d been contained in a cramped space and hadn’t even noticed, until he’d gotten out and could move freely.

So normal now was definitely different from normal before. There was a ceremony, for one thing. It was small and simple, performed by Father Layne, one of their human bookshop visitors, but Azra _glowed_ , and Tony had to concentrate to keep himself on the ground. And now they wore rings, declaring themselves to be together, openly for anyone who cared to notice.

They found that they had more insight now for their bookshop regulars, and, in some way that wasn’t fully definable but was nonetheless very real, more freedom to share that insight. Azra smiled kindly and sadly as he admitted that some families might not ever be safe to be considered as such, and spoke gently of the possibility of finding your own family. Tony curbed his impatience with humans who couldn’t see their path yet, and found himself able, sometimes, to help them take the next step or two ahead into what seemed like tangled darkness from one side and would, eventually, feel like emerging into greater brightness on the other side.

It took a while, but one day, some months after that wild and terrifying and unexpectedly beautiful day, Tony looked around and realized that this was _reality_. He touched his ring, cool and solid as ever on his finger. He trailed his fingers across the lustrous leaves of one of his plants, and looked around at the rest, installed at various points across the bookshop and inexplicably thriving, as if they’d always been there. He breathed in the scents of dust and aging paper and leather bindings and cocoa, and turned a bit to take in the sight of Azra unnecessarily sorting a stack of books. He glanced toward the front of the shop, where their newest regulars sat, a pair of children who combined adventurousness and thoughtfulness in a way that was creeping into his heart.

He had to sit down.

There was nothing unusual about sitting down, but something about it alerted Azra; he was at Tony’s side immediately, a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Are you alright, dear?”

“I’m really, really good,” said Tony, his voice thicker than usual. Azra scanned his face—not exactly anxiously, but very thoroughly. “It’s just—” Tony went on, just above a whisper, “this is real. This is _us_. I can have this, and you can have this, and”—he swallowed—“and it’s real.”

Azra smiled, not a wide smile but a core-deep, rock-solid smile. “Yes, darling,” he said. He sat next to him and took Tony’s left hand in his left hand, so that their rings touched. “You’ve always been the most real thing in my life. Have I said that, before?”

Tony scooted closer to him. “Maybe not exactly that.”

“Hmm,” said Azra, twinkling. “I’ll add it to the list.”

“You have a list?”

“Of ways to tell you how very much and how very permanently I love you?” Azra asked. “Possibly.”

“Ngk,” said Tony.

They closed the shop a quarter of an hour later, and found another way to show each other how very real…and very tangible…their love was.

It took a while. All night, in fact.

In the morning, Tony woke, for once, before Azra, and took advantage of the chance to lie still and gaze at his angel—plush round cheeks, delicately upturned nose, disarrayed white curls, gently opened lips. He could feel a soppily unvampiric smile spreading across his face. There had been a time when he would have tried to suppress that smile.

How ridiculous.

Presently Azra blinked his eyes open. The crow’s feet at the corners crinkled as he took in Tony’s smile. “Good morning, darling.”

“G’morning, angel.”

Azra traced a slow finger down Tony’s cheekbone. Tony would have closed his eyes, except that would have interrupted his angel gazing.

“Do you need anything, dearest?”

“Nah,” said Tony. “Just you.”

Azra smiled, the smile Tony would do anything for, and gave him that fluttering glance up through his eyelashes that never failed to render all of Tony’s useless insides even _more_ useless.

“Darling,” Azra said, “if you’ll keep smiling at me like that, then that will be all I need as well.”

It was, in fact, a very good thing that Tony didn’t mind being soppy, these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are!! Sorry for the delays, and thanks SO much for staying with this fic! Do read HolyCatsAndRabbits' Mr. Fell's Bookshop ficlets; they're delightful! (and they explain a few little nods in this chapter.)
> 
> Love to all of you, and even if Mr. Fell's bookshop isn't a physical reality in our world, I hope you all find the safe space or found family you need in your own life. Message me if you'd like an internet parent to send you virtual hugs. <3


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